I Defied Death, Yet Again!

I’m back from DC: the first of my three trips in the next two months. At the end of April I’ll be in Chicago on a long overdue vacation and visit with my friend Liz, celebrating the anniversary of her birth and my 25 saved up vacation days. After that I’m off to another tradeshow in Philadelphia, where I’ve never been, so I’m excited. The only problem is, I never, ever want to fly again, EVER.

I’m serious. I had a horrible trip to and from Washington DC. The landing into Dulles was 45 minutes of turbulence and vomit. I seriously reached for my barf bag, which I’m sure frightened the unfortunate woman sitting in the seat next to me. Fortunately I didn’t have to use it. I kissed the ground after deplaning and spent the rest of the night reassuring my stomach and nerves that it would never happen again.

The flight back to Long Beach today was extremely uneventful-if you exclude my neighbor taking off his freakin’ shoes 10 minutes into the flight. NICE! Everything was fine until we started to land. The plane began to shake and wobble, and just as we touch down we took off again. WTF??? Before I knew it we’re over the ocean. It seemed like forever before the captain came on over the intercom to tell us that we were going to “try that landing again.” Well no shit, either that or we were going to continue on to Hawaii! The next landing was a bit shaky and I must tell you, I did make my peace with the man upstairs. When we finally landed I was a bit annoyed-the captain didn’t even apologize for the crappy attempt at a landing that first time around. As I descended the stairs I realized that it was the hurricane-like winds that had caused the troubles. It nearly blew my dainty body across the tarmac. Not that it’s any excuse. I told my favorite Laserfiche regional sales manager, Mr. Walter, at baggage claim that the captain would probably get a lot of grief from the other pilots and air-traffic control staff for not being able to “get his plane down.” I guess that joke works better spoken then in print. Geez, tough crowd.

I’m so glad to be back in the LBC. But I am tired. I’m still on East Coast time. Luckily I’m going to sleep in ‘til noon tomorrow. That’s how to get rid of jetlag, right?