I think I'm gonna go skydiving. I've never done it before. It was a goal of mine before the baby came, but once she got here I started to feel like it was no longer my life to risk. Once you have a kid you kinda have to put your own risky desires on the back burner. I still believe that, but I've been down in the dumps lately and can't seem to shake it. So I figure nothing makes a person feel more alive than thinking they're gonna die.
I remember sometime back in 2006 I was feeling a little down. I felt trapped in my dead-end job and stressed out. Then came a break in the clouds: The powers that be sent me on a two week business trip. I came back from that trip refreshed and ready for the world. I was so psyched when I got back that I put my nose to the grind and got a bonus and a promotion over the next couple of months. But it wasn't the trip that did it.
It was the flight there that breathed new life into me. I flew to Colorado, which is about as close to God as I've been, elevation-wise. I woke up on the plane right before we landed in Colorado Springs. I had an aisle seat, so I looked over to my left and saw the sky. No biggie, we're in a plane. What else would I see? I looked to my right and I saw the ground. Not part of the ground. I saw THE GROUND. Now let that marinate for a second.
In order for a passenger to see nothing but the sky in one direction and nothing but the ground in the other, the plane has to be tilted sideways. That's when realized I was kinda sliding to the right in my seat. We leveled out and as she was scurrying to the front of the plane, the flight attendant told me to turn off my iPod. I'm using the word "scurrying" for dramatic effect. It implies that she was moving swiftly and outside of the norm. I feel like saying "running for dear life" is too straightforward.
While "scurrying" she fell over to her side because the plane forgot how to fly. It started making this popping sound which does wonders for a person's confidence in it's craftsmanship. While she's falling to her side, I'm lifting up in the seat from what Physics would call inertia. My internal screams of "We're gonna die" were rudely interrupted by the pilot who came on the PA to say some nonsense about wind shears.
That's a term that I'd never heard before and I still need to write a letter to American Airlines to demand that they have dictionaries or glossaries, at the very least, of aeronautical terms. I still don't know the technical definition, but from what I surmised over the next--I don't know--five minutes of hell is that sometimes the wind can blow so hard that it gives the pilot an excuse to relive his glory days in the military.
Apparently, my pilot used to be Maverick from Top Gun. Before I get into that, I'd also like to take this moment to tell all of the pilots out there that there are just some things that you don't need to share with us. "Control had asked us to circle a while until the wind shears let up, but we're running low on fuel and need to go ahead and land..." IS NOT something I need to know. It says two things to me.
1) The experts on the ground think we should wait to land because now isn't the best time to try to land a plane.
2) Normally we'd listen but we don't have enough gas so we're coming down one way or another.
So anyway, after our heart-to-heart, the pilot tells us that we're gonna have to dive in order to get through these wind shears. "We'll be coming in faster than you may be used to." That was the moment when I saw the flight attendant sprint to her seat. We started "descending." That's a euphemism for flying full speed toward the ground.
The plane started bouncing up and down violently. I got that feeling in my stomach that you only get on roller coasters. As we got closer to the ground I felt us going faster. "Is he speeding up??? Does he not know what's at the end of this ride?" I started to think that this might be normal, so I looked at the flight attendant for comfort. I've been in turbulence before and the flight attendants usually sit there reading a book or something. Not this time. She did the Catholic cross across her chest and bowed her head.
We're gonna die.
We got to the ground but we were at an angle not conducive to landing a plane. He finally got us straightened out and then the wind picked back up just as he was trying to touch down. I felt the back wheel on the right hit the ground and then we bounced back in the air. The left wheel touched down the next time and we bounced again. Finally, I guess he just said the hell with it and put all the wheels down. It felt like we were running over railroad tracks or something. Then a loud noise and we stopped.
Honest to God, the first thing I did when I got off was kiss the ground. Bare lips on the cement outside our little puddle jumper. I have never been that scared in my life and from there, life had purpose. So...yeah I think I'll sky dive. It seems way less scary than that plane ride.
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