Takeoff, landing, and the flight in between is awesome. I've not flown enough for that to get old. However, the time spend waiting to get ON the plane, or waiting for it to start taxiing, is _amazingly_ boring. Imagine waiting in line to get in an elevator, and then once you're inside, you have to wait ... and wait ... and then the elevator attendants give the mandatory safety spiel that you can't see well, and then finally it starts to move after ten minutes.

That's roughly what the pre-launch portion of an airplane trip is like, and I wholeheartedly empathize with someone traveling alone wanting to mentally escape it.