Six days left before I fly away on the big plane in the sky. Sure wish I liked flying...but that has never been the same since one particularly memorable through-stop in San Francisco. For those who have never had the pleasure, it basically looks like you're going to land in the ocean - the airport landing strip is on a tiny ribbon of land surrounded by the Great Blue Beyond. Now, I love the ocean - I really do. But I have no interest in plummeting into it at however many gazillion miles per hour a passenger jet is coming in. But I digress. (You'll want to be getting used to that...)
So we are flying into SF on an evening so stormy that they have been closing the airport on and off all day. (This, naturally, is not a good sign and had not exactly increased the confidence level of the passengers.) Our flight had been delayed numerous times, and I for one was fine with that. Delayed - fine. Dead - not so. Before landing - we had to circle the airport for quite some time in the storm - as the horrific weather and aforementioned closures had backed things up a wee bit. Even at that altitude, it was a bumpy flight as they say. And boy were they saying it!
One of the things I found most notable was the complete absence of soothing messages from the cockpit. You know: "Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be experiencing some mild turbulence. Please fasten your seatbelts, etc." Nope. Nary a word. This circling is going on for quite some time, so they had plenty of time to say hello, mention the weather would be getting even worse than we already knew about, send us a line - something. Anything! Nothing. Which from my own experience with pilots of smaller craft led me to believe they didn't have time for any of that nonsense. They were too busy trying to keep us alive. Which was only fair, and even though I missed the soothing nonsense, I was more than willing to let them focus on keeping that giant chunk of metal aloft in gale-force winds.
After what seemed hours but was about twenty minutes or so, we finally begin our descent. Into hell.
The plane began lurching about as though it was attached to a demonic child's marionette strings. We are talking tossed about in the storm. We are talking floating magazines. We are talking airsick bags. Down we dropped - and then up-surged. That's not a word, but that's what we did. It was the longest descent of my life, and for the entire time, we jerked about like a puppet in a hurricane. I was quite certain we were going to die. It was very clear.
My best friend was with me, and we (along with everyone else) had Assumed The Position, heads between our knees, sobbing, holding hands, and praying. Now, you may not know me, but I'm not known for traditional prayer. But I was praying to any and all gods I could think of. I'm also not much of a crier - I tend to cry once a year or so just to keep in practice. (Or I did before I met my husband, who is truly gifted at helping me access the crying program. But I digress again. I told you...) But on this evening, I was sobbing. In public. Gulping, Death-Is-Comin'-On-In silent sobbing.
When we got to the part where the plane levels out and is theoretically parallel to the ground just above the tarmac, we could see right out of the window into the ocean. Ocean with whipped crazy waves that looked as though they were coming up onto the strip. Giant greedy waves. Foaming fountains of stuff you can't breathe when your plane crashes into it - that sort of ocean. We careened down the strip, tossed from side to side and lurching up and down, before finally getting one wheel on the ground, and then.....BAM! the other wheels finally hit the tarmac and the reverse thrusters or whatever the heck they use started in.
As we shuddered along, still swerving from the wind, to the end of the run way and then finally to a halt there was complete and total silence. (Well, silence if you don't count the weeping, praying, sobbing and throwing up. Which by then was just normal background noise...) Then, very slowly, one person began to clap, and then another and another until we were all applauding the pilots, the crew, ourselves, and the sheer relief of being alive. People who didn't even know each other were clapping each other on the shoulders, hugging, and laughing giddily together in the joy of being gloriously, fabulously alive and not in the ocean.
Then after a short stop, we (those of us lucky enough to be flying on) had to take back off in that very same storm. But that's another story, and this will hopefully have been enough to illustrate why I no longer enjoy flight.
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