Back up, it's not really the flying part that I feared, it's the crashing part that made my palms sweat and cause perspiration to bead on my forehead. This in turn also inspired teasing from my better half.
"Hee, hee, look at you! Relax!"
In fact, I was so freaked out about flying with my wife that I insisted on us taking separate planes when we went on vacation together - just in case the plane went down our boys wouldn't be orphaned. That's how far I took my anxiety of flying and I took a load of shit for it over the years but every single time another young father hears my reasoning for the wife and I taking separate planes, they ALL say,
"That's actually a good idea."
Howie Long and his wife had the same flight policy while their sons were young. If anything, I'm practical.
Nowadays do we still travel separately? Nah, I got over my fear of flying and with the boys being older, I figured that if the plane we were on ever did go down, they would be old enough to remember their mother and father and have a pile of money to split up. I could spend eternity living with that logic. See you on the other side and all that.
So the other day I was on a business trip with a young man from my office. We hopped the company jet (Southwest Airlines) at 10:30am for a short flight to Ontario, CA. Our return was delayed since our client was very talkative and absolutely loved our presentation so we took the last flight of the day home from ONT. It was on this flight home that rekindled albeit for only a short time the reasons why I once hated to step inside an airplane.
The flight is only about 40 minutes so it's not like we hunker down and watch a movie - we go up for 15 minutes and then start the landing procedure. Strange. But it's a 3 hour drive with traffic if we took a car and I hate driving more than I hate flying - so flying simply became the lesser of two evils.
On the way home, at minute marker 30, the plane suddenly dipped, twisted, and porpoised - sort of a roller coaster ride for an aircraft, for about 10 seconds. I looked out the window and I watched the wing go way up and then it bounced way down - a few times. A rubber seal came flying from the ceiling and a guy 2 rows in front of us literally lost his drink in mid-air. For those precious few seconds, the pilot and I were both passengers on the same plane and I didn't like that at all.
At that moment, I seriously thought that the plane was going to break into 2 pieces and that I'd be in the part without the steering wheel or jet engines. Memo to Self: Make sure to pack parachute next time.
Thankfully the plane survived the rough air. We landed in a moderate crosswind (the culprit of the turbulence was high winds) and were no worse for the experience.
I remember what Robert, a retired 747 pilot told me years ago, wings are meant to go up and down just like they I watched them do - if they didn't, THAT would be bad.
It's just that that phrase I first heard as a kid has been bouncing around upstairs lately.....If man were meant to fly he would have been born with wings.
1 comment:
I remember when you and mom would fly on different flights - and yes, I think that is pretty practical too, but I didn't know that you were once afraid of flying (crashing).
Who was the meeting with? How did it go?
ACR
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