Shakes On A Plane

I had given up all hope, and resigned myself to the fact that my plane was going down.

Since I'm typing this entry, I was obviously wrong, but yesterday, I did have perhaps the worst flight ever. There were several factors in the making of this story. First, I was on a very small plane, an ERJ-145 that had 50 seats. Second, there was some severe weather between Rochester and Chicago (directly in our way). Third, and most importantly, I wasn't supposed to be on that flight. I had put myself on a earlier flight as my day in New York finished up early. I am a big believer that when you change your travel arrangements, you are just asking for trouble.

You would think that as much as I fly that I wouldn't mind it, but the fact is that I am completely afraid of being in the air. I do not enjoy flying at all. As our plane bounced, rumbled, dropped and shuddered, I was miserable. Looking around, everyone else seemed fine, but I was grabbing the arms of my seat with white knuckled death grips. At one point I was convinced we were going down.

Twenty five minutes later we were out of the storm and flying smoothly. I prayed in gratitude and on let go of the arms of my seat. Ultimately, I arrived home about 15 minutes earlier than scheduled on my original itinerary, but my original itinerary didn’t arrive in Dallas until the next morning, so twenty five minutes of terror got me home about 12 hours earlier. I’ll take that trade.

SL