You ever see those movies? Final Destination… I kind of like them, although if you get too hooked, you’ll start going down a rabbit hole every time you leave your house; let’s not get paranoid now. For example, how about getting on an airplane? You ever worry about that?
My flight for LA was booked for Thursday morning. I’ve flown dozens of times; I never worry. Funny thing about this particular trip, I did have some apprehensions. I think it was a combination of things. Sure, seeing the recent accidents with airplanes may have been on my mind, no doubt. Thinking about being away from my wife and son for a while, more than just a day or two, AND it being Valentine’s Day weekend… yeah, I was going to miss them. I was thinking about this trip, this flight earlier in the week… I’m sure it will be fine; it always is. Then the snow came… I shoveled twice on Wednesday before I left, including the last time after the Bulls game about 930pm. I thought, maybe my flight will be delayed… when I get up early, I’ll check, and if it is, I’ll go back to sleep. I got up early, checked, and my flight was still on time. OK, time to get ready…
The Uber to the airport was without issue; that early in the morning there’s minimal traffic. Security was a breeze, as was boarding the plane. Things were going along fine as we took off from Chicago; I started to doze off… we’ll be in LA before you know it. Then I kind of came to… I smelled something… smoke; wtf is that? Now I can’t smell that good, but I smelled it. In fact, talking with someone later on that same flight, he had to cover up his face the smell was so strong; he was sitting 7 rows behind me. Then, all the smoke alarms on the plane started going off. OK, this can’t be good. Listening to the lady talk behind me later on, she was sleeping too… and wondered who was going to shut these alarms off… haha. Anyways, the stewardess was walking throughout the plane, telling us to remain calm; everything is fine. The other stewardess walked the other way with a fire extinguisher… Then they got on the speaker. “Everything is fine; we’re OK. We’ll be landing back in Chicago in 20 minutes”… I guess everything isn’t OK…
As we landed back in Chicago, a fire truck met us on the runway, and followed us to the gate. The firemen boarded the plane with all of us still seated, looking around. I don’t know what they found, if anything, but a couple minutes later, it was announced that this plane was out of commission; we will be getting off to await further instructions at the gate. Great, just great… but hey, at least we landed back in Chicago in one piece…
A couple hours, and a couple beers later with my new friend from Thailand, we boarded another plane to LA; we all clapped when we finally landed in LAX. I didn’t really think much about this; I had too much to do. When it was happening in the air, I remained pretty calm; what could I do? If this is it, this is it, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It didn’t really hit me until I woke up the next morning at 330am and couldn’t go back to sleep… I thought about it… back to that whole control thing… and it’s not just getting in an airplane, or car, or walking out of our house. Life can be over, life can change in an instant; all we can do is control how we act while we’re still walking this earth. Example #467…
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