{"id":2268,"date":"2009-06-15T10:42:17","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T14:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/?p=2268"},"modified":"2009-06-15T10:42:17","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T14:42:17","slug":"so-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/?p=2268","title":{"rendered":"So – flying"},"content":{"rendered":"

When my Mom told me of my sister in laws passing, within milliseconds, my brain coughed up the thought “you are going to to have to get on a plane”. It is an\"newark\" interesting feature of the human brain, that we can think numerous thoughts simultaneously, so while my main thoughts were of disbelief, horror and incredible sadness for my brother, this errant little corner of my mind was smugly certain I would<\/em> fly to Arizona, and constantly tortured me with that fact.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid of heights. Even seeing photos or film of high places makes my feet all sweaty and squinchy feeling. I have at times, put the fear aside, to participate in activities others find enjoyable – I went to the top of the Prudential Building in Boston when Larry and I were there with my sister and her husband. And a couple years ago, when Larry and I went to Niagara Falls for New Years Eve, we went on the Skywheel there – it was even my idea since Larry would never suggest such a thing to me, knowing as he does, how I feel altitudes higher than the stepstool I use to water the plants on top of my kitchen cabinets.\"skywheel\"From the moment they moved the thing so that the people in the car behind us could get on, I was thinking “WHAT WAS I THINKING???” I survived it though, and if Larry hadn’t been there to confirm the story, no one who knows me well would have ever believed that I did it.<\/p>\n

So, after discovering how dirt cheap airline fares have become, there was no question about it – I had to finally fly. I realize it’s pretty unusual to get to the age of 54 without ever flying. The simplest reason is that I never had <\/em>to. There was no way I could allow my fear to prevent me from going to be with my family, as we all cope with one of the worst events we have ever been through. And I was curious – would I begin screaming before<\/em> we taxied down the runway, or would I be able to wait until the plane actually left the ground? How many burly male passengers would it take to subdue me when I began to hysterically pound on the door, begging the pilot to turn around and return me to terra firma? Only time would tell.<\/p>\n

Immediately on arriving at the Ithaca airport, I found out that my flight was delayed – which bollixed up my plan to meet my sister in Newark and fly on to Phoenix together. In fact, in the course of this trip, I became convinced that airlines keep you waiting so long that a plane crash would be a welcome alternative to sitting in lounges or on the tarmac for untold hours. It’s their way of alleviating fear I suppose. “Lost: The Nebraska Edition” would be far preferable to one more second on a hot, stinky, noisy plane.<\/p>\n

Ok, ok. You want to know what I thought of flying, don’t you? I decided before the first plane left, that I would look for stuff to like about flying, instead of just being terrified. And the fact is – it wasn’t that hard for me to do. Flying is a marvel! All I could think when I looked down, was how wonderful God is, to have made people smart enough to figure out how to do this successfully [the key word Lord, is successfully<\/strong><\/em>, of course]. I am shocked at how much I enjoyed it. [all together now: “I told you so!”] <\/p>\n

And you don’t get photos like these, standing on the ground.
\nWe were probably over Ohio when the sun began to come up\"fly4\"As it got more light, the colors became more subtle\"fly1\"We flew by a huge line of thunderstorms\"fly2\"That line of storms ended up closing down the Newark airport for several hours, resulting in not only another long delay, but in an extremely unpleasant last leg of the trip in a plane roughly the size of my mini van. They looked pretty amazing from up here though.\"fly3\"But I am still glad to be back on the front porch with Larry and a nice glass of shiraz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When my Mom told me of my sister in laws passing, within milliseconds, my brain coughed up the thought “you are going to to have to get on a plane”. It is an interesting feature of the human brain, that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2268"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2278,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions\/2278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}