Wind Beneath My Wings

I hate to fly. Not just a little bit. I mean, I absolutely hate flying. Not as much as I hate boats, but I really don't like to be off solid ground. John Madden had a point with the bus thing. Yesterday was one of those days which encapsulates everything I hate about air travel.

We'll pick up the story in Philly. I don't really want to get into why I was in the Philly airport, but I would like to point out that flying from Baltimore to Philly is one of the all-time colossal wastes of time. At most, its a 30 minute flight. They never even turned off the light saying it was okay to use electronic devices. You don't even finish the ascent before its time to descend. But there I was, flying to Philadelphia against my will and better judgment.*

There was a "weather event" in Dallas yesterday. Or, as I like to call them, tornadoes. I didn't know that as I loaded onto the plane at 2:00 EST. Anyway, we sat on the plane for a half an hour before the captain told everybody that there were storms in Dallas, no one was landing, so we'd take off in an hour. So just sit tight, kids. We'll be in the air in an hour. So we sat on a plane for an hour, and true to his word, we took off at about 3:30 EST.

At 7:00 CST, we landed in Shreveport.

There's not a whole lot of flightplans I disapprove of more than "Philly to Shreveport," so I was a little miffed. I'd also been sitting in this plane for six hours now, and I was kind of getting sick of it. I don't like being trapped in a small metal tube any longer than I have to be. Apparently, the storms hadn't stopped and traffic was being rerouted to other airports. OK, fine. But I was flying US Air, and US Air does not fly to Shreveport. So the good people at the Shreveport airport wouldn't let us deplane. So I was stuck on the airplane until we got clearance and of course, fuel.

At this point, I should point out that I was sitting next to a deaf-mute. Ordinarily, this is the greatest person in the world to sit next to you because I don't have to talk to them, but breaking the bad news to her over a series of scribbled notes was not my idea of a good time.


"Where are we?"
"Shreveport"
"Why?"
"Tornadoes in Dallas."
"When do we get to Dallas?"
"After we get fuel"
"When is that?"
[shrug]

The correct answer turned out to be 9:30 CST. Of course, they forgot the paperwork. And by this point, the storm had moved past Dallas and settled into -- you guessed it -- Shreveport. I called my buddy Bruce for a weather update:

"You know how rain is usually green on the map?"
"Yeah."
"It's red"
"That's not good."
"You ain't taking off."
"Sure we are, the airline wouldn't lie."
"Well, put your arms above your head."
"Why?"
"Because its gonna be a better ride than anything in DisneyWorld."

We took off. To call that "turbulence" is like calling a torando "breezy".

I was sitting over the wing, so I looked out my window and realized it was so cloudy I couldn't see the wingtip. I half expected to see the gremlin from the Twilight Zone. Every so often the sky would light up with a flash of lightning which would helpfully illuminate the entire cabin. I took that opportunity to look around the cabin to make sure we weren't all dead.

It was at about this point the lady behind me asked if I was using my air sickness bag. I had never actually seen a barf bag used on a flight, and really, I think I could have gone my whole life without that experience.

We landed in Dallas a little after midnight. At that point, I had been sitting in the same metal tube for 11 hours. That little bag of pretzels also wasn't doing the best of job of nipping that hunger in the bud.

And then I left the airport and got to drive home to Waco. So, how was your vacation?

*Note from Management -- I think we've established beyond any reasonable doubt at this point that my "better judgment" is rather less than the average person's. Let's just move on.