1. Westward Bound
Marcia and I gave up writing long, humorous holiday letters almost two decades ago. Still, we just embarked on a 3-½ month trip to California to spend time with family, and I am committing to write a short note every week or so while we are away, to keep our friends and family up to date.
Of course, my real motivation in writing isn’t to keep you up to date. I’m not doing anything interesting enough to justify “updating” anyone. Truth be told, I am writing to address a deep fear that if I remain silent for 3-½ months, I won’t have any friends when I return. You will have drifted away in my absence, and I will be left without a social network, which (as we all know) is not a good state of affairs for introverted males with borderline social skills. I will find myself unmoored, adrift, living alone. (Somehow, Marcia has also left me in this dystopian fantasy, even though she is sitting next to me as I type and doesn’t require any updating).
Where to begin?
The plane flight, of course. I brought my industrial strength air quality monitor with me on Delta flight 1446 from DTW to SFO. Marcia and I moved our flights up at the last minute and didn’t have an opportunity to book seats together. I occupied a window seat and my row mates -- complete strangers to me -- were visibly unnerved when I pulled a large unfamiliar orange electronic device out of my backpack, uncapped the protruding sensor, held it with both hands, and turned it on. My row mates glanced first at the device, then at my face, and then back at the device as it booted up, beeped, and displayed a series of puzzling numbers on the screen. “It’s an air quality monitor,” I chirped, unconvincingly. I can only imagine the thoughts that were running through their minds.
And those data, you ask?
It turns out that Delta 1446 subjected its passengers to unhealthy carbon dioxide levels. We were breathing too much of one another’s exhaled breath. But thanks to the air filters on the plane, there were very few small particulates in the air -- the type that might hold virus particles. Here are the carbon dioxide (C02) data, presented in parts per million (ppm):
For reference, 400 ppm is the background (normal) outdoor C02 level in the air these days. 500-1,000 ppp is the typical range found in occupied spaces with decent air exchange. 1,000-2,000 ppm produces drowsiness. And 2,000-5,000 ppm results in headaches, sleepiness, and poor concentration. That said, these levels are all well below OSHA limits and less than 1/10th what the astronauts on Apollo 13 experienced. History was not made on Delta 1446.
I would love to discuss the accuracy of my air quality instrument, air exchange and filtration systems in airplanes, and the other types of air quality measurements I made. But doing so would constitute “mansplaining,” which puts people to sleep faster than C02. So I won’t, even though I really want to.
When I next write, we will land this plane. And I will tell you about how Californians react to their rainy season.
Paul