Airplane Meme...

So everyone's posting about their favorite airplanes. Not this cat. I hate 'em. More specifically, they terrify me. I'm one of those "white knuckled fliers".

Y'see, a while back, long before we had kids, Mrs. G. and I went down to FLA with another couple to go on a cruise. We went from Tampa, Florida (proud motto: Not as crime-infested as you think!) to Cozumel, Mexico (proud motto: Hey, gringo, you like?) over the course of a week (including the return trip).

Highlights of the trip included:

*My MIL's van blowing the timing belt on the way to the airport, tearing out two of the four cylinders and very nearly causing us to miss our plane.

*Listening to a country and western band in the Day's Inn Lounge absolutely MURDER "The Electric Slide". Folks, I cannot stress just how wrong a turn your life has taken if you are a country & western singer and you are performing "The Electric Slide" in a Day's Inn in Tampa, Florida.

*Shooting skeet off the back of the cruise ship - this was cool.

*Hearing, "No es el cucaracha. Es [pause] el SCORPION!" and then seeing a large, angry scorpion scurry across the chess board my friend was contemplating purchasing.

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We did have a lot of fun, most of which we were able to suppress with years of psychotropic narcotics.

The flight back, OTOH... First off, there was a hurricane rolling in. Miami airport was closed because of the winds, and planes were being diverted to Tampa. This meant that flights were delayed significantly - we were still sitting in the Tampa airport when we should have been landing at BWI for the connecting flight back to Logan.

So we wind up on standby for a nonstop from Tampa to Logan. We get, literally, the last four seats on the last plane leaving Tampa.

As we ascend to cruising altitude, we're getting hit with the advancing front of the hurricane. Serious turbulence. Turbulence so bad that the flight attendants were scared.

And then we hit free-fall.

I am not making this up. We hit a downdraft that must have dropped us a couple thousand feet at once, because for a second or two, we were literally weightless. I watched the person sitting in front of me let go of their newspaper, and it floated in mid-air. I was so scared, I recited the "Our Father". In English *and* French.

The pilot came on the intercom a few seconds later, and the tone of his voice indicated that he was only marginally less bothered than I. We ascended SIGNIFICANTLY faster, and achieved a rather high cruising altitude that kept us well above the storm for the remainder of the flight.

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I flew on business a handful of times after this. Had an air traffic controller try to land us on top of another plane at Logan one time (ooooh, the pilot of our plane was PISSED about that...) We're making our final approach to the runway, landing gear down, flaps out, etc. when all of a sudden the plane just launches forward. Full throttle. We abort the landing, and go back into holding pattern. The pilot came on over the intercom, and he was spitting nails. He apologized for the abrupt maneuver, telling us, "Sorry, but they were trying to mate us with a 737"...

But nothing, nothing was more frightening than the free fall. I honestly thought I was going to die... So, no favorite planes for this blogger...