22 July 2012

The joys of flying

I love how it feels to fly.  I love being in an airplane over the farms and cities of the United States.  I love trying to guess at which point a plane has reached the necessary velocity to achieve a good liftoff from the ground and I love trying to guess when the plane is flat enough and slow enough to achieve a good smooth landing.  I love when I get a seat on an airplane that is right behind first class so that I have a ton of leg room.

I also love seeing that I am in row 9 and knowing that I will again be in the front of the airplane.

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I don't love delays that are over an hour long. 

I don't love being taken to a different part of the tarmac to be let out in front of a plane that is so small that it still has propellers and looks like some sort of Tonka toy.

I don't like that the plane is so small and dainty looking that I spend much of the flight making sure I can still see row 4 - location of the emergency exit.

I don't like that I also spend much of the flight determining which of the people in the 5 rows in front of me I can beat or take out in order to get to the exit row quickly.

I do not like getting on said small plane and realizing that it is so small that row 9 is actually the LAST ROW of the entire plane.

I don't like being seated in the middle of that last row (five seats straight across like a couch) with my body not protected by a seat in front of me.  I don't like that I fear that the plane is so small that I fear that my body will be hurled through the aisles upon some sort of inevitable malfunction and I will land in the lap of the flight attendant who sits facing me throughout the entire flight - no snacks, no drinks, just her strapped to a small chair facing me the whole flight.

I do not like when my normal sized backpack does not fit in the over head bins.

I do not like when the plane is so small that the tires come out of the wings and not the underside of the plane.

I do not like when the plane, due to the delays, is stuck on the runway for 17 minutes and the engine is so powerful on such a large plane that the plane continues to rock side to side for the entire 17 minutes until we start forward motion again.

I don't like when the plane starts its decent and each lowering motion brings that stomach-moving up in your innards feeling even when there is no cloud turbulence.

I do like that I made it alive to NYC and get to spend some time with Kid Sis #1, though.

6 comments:

  1. Tires....out of the WINGS?! In all of my quadrillion flights as a consultant, I never saw such a thing. Are you sure you weren't on some sort of magical alien spaceship?

    I flew in row three of a flight this past weekend (don't worry, not first class. Just Southwest), and was terrified by how steep taking off and landing (!!!) felt from there as opposed to the middle of the plane where I usually sit. I would imagine the (very) back of the plane would have a similar experience. Maybe that could be to blame for said stomach floppery?

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    1. It was a bit weird on the first plane to be so close to the front - for the feeling of lift off, as well as actually getting to get off close to first.

      I would like to think that it was because I was in the back that I had stomach floppery, but the plane was so small that I'm not sure that I was any lower or higher in altitude than anyone else on the plane. It was so small!!!!!

      It was literally shorter than my classroom. The flight attendant was talking through a speaker-thing and I wanted to tell her to stop wasting time and just talk to us. She was fumbling with the mike while she was trying to do the flight attendant-safety spiel as she tried to simultaneously demonstrate how to fasten the belt and what to do with the gas mask. I wanted her to just put the mike down and talk. It was ridiculous!

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  2. As a pretty frequent traveler, I don't like when I am surrounded on either side by two "large" passengers who give me no arm room.

    I also don't like living next door to a cute stewardess because I rarely see her. lol

    Oh, and I don't like a lot of the food, especially on long flights.

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    1. I'm sure living by a stewardess does cause problems when she has layovers in other cities. ;-)
      Perhaps, you can start flying stand by on her flights.

      I did have a large passenger in my row, which had no arm rests, by the way. Fortunately, there was one empty seat in the row, so we were all able to have as much personal space as the row allowed.

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  3. Growing up my step-dad had small planes cesna 182 4 seater and we did lots of trips in that small plane. I wish you a great visit and enjoyment of time spent with your sis safe journey home as well :]

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    1. Thanks!! It's already been fun and it's only day one.

      I think I could get used to small planes if they weren't old-looking on the outside and inside and if they weren't dingy and dirty and dark and if they were flow by someone I trusted.

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