When I was in the Navy, sailors frequently bought and read Penthouse Magazine; one of the favorite features was The Forum. These stories frequently started out with the line…..

Part I.

I never thought that it would happen to me. But it did…..it all started with an airline trip from Austin, Texas to Chicago, Illinois.

The visit in Austin had been good; I enjoyed my time with my pre-teen daughter but now it was time to return. I remember seeing my ex wife; it pained me to see her at 300 plus pounds. But that is another story….still, the flight back was usually a “downer”, though I still had a few weeks prior to the start of the spring term.

I was a bit annoyed that I wasn’t able to book a seat on the side that had only single seats, but at least I had that aisle seat that my football knee needed.

I took my seat; the person who was to occupy the window seat had yet to arrive. It didn’t matter that much; so long as they didn’t smell bad and weren’t so fat that they flopped into my space, it was ok with me.

I remember seeing her coming down the aisle; she had a lap top and a back-pack style book bag. She wore practical black walking shoes, a black sweater with a grey tweed straight skirt.

I wouldn’t call her rubenesque but she did have ample hips that challenged the fiber of that tweed skirt and those hips were accented by small waist and her plump, almost maternal breasts shaped out her sweater.

Her straight reddish-brown hair teased gently against the wide neck of the sweater; her small red framed glasses enhanced her hazel eyes.

I smiled to myself while pretending not to notice; I was looking forward to her walking to the back of the plane so I could get the rear view; straight skirts on that kind of figure always affected me that way. The high-school boy in me hoped that she would drop something and have to pick it up.

Instead she slowed and opened the luggage compartment over my head and turned toward me to put her book bag in the bin; I was so tempted to find an excuse to lean forward.

Yeah, there were times when I got a face full of female bosom on a plane in such situations, but those were cases where I wasn’t paying attenting. This was far from the case this time!

She said “excuse me” and said: “I have 8-c”. So I got up, stepped out and let her slide in front of me; I saw enough of her leg to think “she must workout at least a bit” but her curvy, ample. rounded but toned derriere indicated that she was probably not into serious marathon running.

I kind of sighed internally; hey I am a guy and I’ve been single for a while.

What I noticed is that she did not immediately go to her purse to get a cell phone; for that I was grateful.

There isn’t much to say on the taxi and the take off; though I had a book, I kind of leafed though the standard “overpriced junk” catalogue that most airlines provide.

As we became airborne she pulled out her laptop and began to work; I noticed that there was a spreadsheet.

I tried not to stare; but the software package seemed familiar; this wasn’t Excel.

Dang….it was….Minitab? (a statistical software package). I tried not to stare, but I noticed that she was running a design of experiments package.

I am not an expert in this area; in fact my area is a subset of mathematics called “group theory”. But I had recently read a paper that applied group theory to the design of experiments and I had taught calculus based statistics and had taken a design of experiments course…a long time ago.

So I had to say something. I looked at her and caught her eye.

“Design of experiments?” I asked. She nodded and said “yes”.

I joked “So Taguchi isn’t for you?”. She rolled her eyes: “oh PLEASE….” and kind of smiled.

“Actually”, she said, “we had done some data mining on the genomes of various disease causing viruses and was attempting to determine which mix of treatments would retard the spread of them”.

The long and short of it that this was a complicated problem with the possibility of many confounding variables.

Though she was indeed busy and I readily admitted that I was far, far out of my field (which would have been obvious anyway), she appeared to appreciate someone being interested in what she was doing.

As we talked, I noticed the way her toned thighs brushed against mine, and her light touch of my arm when making a point sent just a tiny tingle though me.

Unfortunately for me, the flight from Austin to Dallas was all too brief and after the flight, it was time to go our separate ways; she was headed to Detroit (and eventually to the University of Michigan) whereas my ultimate destination was Normal, Illinois (a small state school, several orders of magnitude below a Big Ten school in prestige).

Always the gentleman I got out into the row and let her leave ahead of me; it had nothing to do with my wanting to watch the war between her gluteal muscles and the fibers of her skirt. Ok, maybe it did.

I would have suggested that we get together in the airport to chat, but she had a tight connection and my connection, while not as tight, was in a separate concourse; a shuttle ride (or long walk) away.

I kind of sighed; I had her name (Brenda) and she had agreed to e-mail me a preprint of her latest paper. But I figured that my seeing her again was unlikely; she was a busy woman who normally associated with big time scientists, and I hardly qualified; my dozen publications were of little importance, save to a handful of specialists working on the small problems that were generated by the work of the big guns of the profession.

I walked to the mini-Pizza Hut and had a bite, then strolled to the nearest airline schedule board….only to find my flight…….CANCELLED!!!

WTF???? Yep, Chicago O’Hare was socked in with fog and it wasn’t expected to clear until the next morning. Nope, all flights to St. Louis and the other nearby airports were full. The next flight…Sunday at 2 pm? This was Friday evening!!!

Sure, these @ssholes knew that my flight was canceled prior to my getting on the plane at Austing……screw them.

*&^%$!! I hate airline travel…at least I did at that time. But the agent did offer me a coupon for a “distressed traveler rate” at the local Super 8, along with a ride to and from the airport.

So, while cursing under my breath, I called for the limo and went downstairs to meet my ride. Fortunately, I had packed a change of underwear and some toilet stuff on my carry-on; I also had a few items (running gear).

I went downstairs and waited for the limo; at least the 60 degree temperatures was a welcome change from winter in Illinois.

As I stood there glumly….and then my mood picked up, sort of.

Guess who I saw striding through the door to the waiting spot, pulling along a small carry on suitcase with her laptop….yes, it was Brenda.

“Brenda….I am happy to see you again, though I wish the circumstances were different.”

“Yes”, fogged in and nothing available until Sunday. “Really”, I said?

“Yes, so I am holed up in the Super 8″……

“Me too, I said”.

“Too cheap for the Sheraton?” she asked. “yep”, I said. “I don’t much care about the surroundings when I am sleeping, so long as they are reasonably quiet and safe.”

She smiled: “you know, we could split a rental car and have more access to Dallas”. I grinned: “great minds…”
She replied: “and mediocre ones too….”

And so I called the hotel to cancel the pick up and we were off to the somewhat distant car rental center via another shuttle.

Of course, we agreed to split an economy car “good milage and lower emissions” she said. My heart went “wuppa, wuppa wuppa…”

And so we drove to the Super 8. She read the map, I drove and it took, maybe 10 minutes (if that); it was the airport hotel after all.

When we got to the lobby, we parked the car, checked into our respective rooms (non-smoking, of course) and exchanged cell phone numbers.

She asked about my plans for the morning and I mentioned that I had running gear with me and would probably drive to White Rock Lake for an early workout, if I could have the car then.

She said: “Sure; I have my workout gear with me too. I don’t run but I love to walk; in fact I’ve walked a half-marathon!”

I smiled and asked her time; it was just under 3 hours. I had to smile; I had slowed with age but my typical half marathon time was about 1:45 these-a-days.

I said “great, let’s make it a date; what time”?

She said: “it gets light at about 7; leave at 6:30 for the bike path?” I said “sure, I’ll be at your room at 6:30″.

We shook hands and went to our respective rooms; I’ll admit that I thought about her taking off that form fitting sweater and that tight skirt….I kind of let my imagination have a workout.

I made it to bed…I had a bit of lap-top withdrawal as I hadn’t checked e-mail nor surfed the net in…well…HOURS…..

End of Part I.

Go to Part II.