Travel Advisory Blues

I woke up this morning to Michael Chertoff explaining to me why my day was going to suck. "John, a terrorist plot has been foiled, and you will have to re-pack all of your bags that you packed last night in your Dallas metroplex hotel room. I'm sorry, but that shampoo in the front pocket of your laptop bag, that was only there for your visits to the gym, must be removed. The expensive cologne you received as a birthday present this past March will need to be removed from your toiletry bag, along with just about everything else in there. In fact, just go ahead and put that in your checked baggage."

"Oh well, no biggie. I can handle a little re-packing," I thought. Then I got to the office and heard just about every bullshit rumor that my coworkers could come up with, out of some motivation to have the definitive information of the crisis. Why everyone thinks they need to prove they're sleeping with Wolf Blitzer's producer is beyond me. "You're going to need to put that laptop in your checked baggage. And I'm not even sure about your cell phone. They're not letting electronics in the cabin." "You might just want to Fedex everything," said another. Despite my skepticism, all their admonitions convinced me and my coworker to split early. That, and the prospect of being at work for another minute provided a compelling argument. We left for the airport a full three hours and fifteen minutes prior to take-off and arrived about thirty minutes later.

In the end, I have to thank Mr. Chertoff, not for his "steely" defense of the motherland (I was a big fan of his sterling response to hurricane Katrina), but for allowing me to make an earlier flight home. I ended up making nearly two hours on the deal, for which I am thankful. But it wasn't all roses. It almost ended badly.

The long approach over the Kansas-like prairie that is eastern Colorado did little to temp me away from the NASA profile in Discover magazine I was reading, but as we descended I noticed another jumbo-jet (at one point the term 'jumbo' wasn't exclusively used to describe jets and shrimp) turning into an approach towards a parallel runway. The sight of running side-by-side another jet was pretty entertaining. I was looking forward to seeing the smoke pop off the wheels upon touchdown as I'd seen so many times before in movies. I was so mezmerized by the scene that I hardly noticed that my plane started to rise even after our wheels had touched the ground. At first my mind didn't trust it, interpreting the enhanced sense of gravity as an effect of our rapidly decreasing speed. From that feeling, my mind moved straight to wondering why our pilot hadn't yet provided us with one of those status updates that have all of the comic whit of a drunk ventriloquist.

Now, I wouldn't say I was necessarily concerned. I'm not the sort to jump to morbid conclusions, such as assuming the landing gear was bad. Flying to me is less of a concern than driving. Unfortunately, I don't say this because of some statistical evaluation. I make this judgment as a result of my somewhat twisted worldview. I don't believe in an afterlife. I believe when you die, you die. That's it. There isn't any consciousness there to allow for regret, pain, or loss. In effect, I'll be the only person I know not caring about my demise in some way or another, even if only because I'd be the best "I had a friend who died in a plane crash" story for each of them. What DOES scare me is living out the rest of my years after being maimed in some tragic accident, and having nothing but time to think about it. The basis of my relative concern is the fact that in a plane crash the former is more likely, and in a car accident the latter.

When we finally heard from our jolly captain he provided an explanation for the failed landing. "Sorry about that folks. The winds were a little bad there and we didn't like the approach. The winds have died down now and we're going to take a second try."

What bullshit. Not only did I watch another plane land parallel to us at the exact same time, I find it hard to believe that if they didn't know the wind would kick up at that exact moment, they probably wouldn't know if it was going to kick up again. My theory is that pilots are trained to lie to us in such cases. The tradition of the ship's captain is alive and well, and the crew must never see him blink...or fuck up. Letting a cabin full of passengers in on the truth is both bad for business, and for confidence. "If he fucked up once, he could surely fuck up again," they might think. Now, if the issue was not one of expertise, but of completely normal meteorological events that can be avoided, it's no big deal. Even better if the pilot externalizes even further and says that "We" made the decision. As if the dude sitting next to him had any input in the matter as the pilot suddenly jerked the plane back upward. Thinking of it, I assume that pilots and stewardesses are trained a litany of sensitivity techniques and corporate policies that result in ways to deftly lie to their passengers. They'd have to. It's the only responsible thing to do in many situations.

In the end, the second attempt was more successful than the first and all of my thoughts were just indulgent musings on the nature of air travel. I did, however, allow myself one final random thought. After all, I am the author of MyHelterSkelterHead. If my plane had dissolved in a fiery landing gear incident, how would my flight status be listed on the handsome flat screen monitors at Denver International Airport? Would the status remain as 'on-time' until it was at some point removed from the listing? Or, would it be changed to 'delayed'. I'd hope it wouldn't be set to 'arrived'. I wouldn't think the airline would deserve the grape-scented scratch-and-sniff sticker that is the 'arrived' status on this one. I assume there isn't a status of 'fiery crash'.