Kevin went through some old paperwork a few days ago and sent me this snippet from a news story:
It’s a little small and certainly faint but if you press the control button on your keyboard and use the scroll button on your mouse, you can make it big enough to read.
This snippet is from 1991. Kevin had a work thing in San Francisco and I went with him. One of his (very pretty and very skinny) co-workers went, too, and she took her mom. So, the four of us went to San Francisco to keep him and his co-worker company.
I don’t remember what I did while Kevin was working, but I do remember hanging out with everyone afterward and touring the town. We rode the street cars, Walked (? – Or did we take a taxi?), to Lombard street, and walked around Fisherman’s Wharf and watched the sea lions sun bathing. It was a lot of fun, but I was four months pregnant with Blake and I do remember huffing and puffing up and down those streets and also feeling very self conscious of my growing belly, especially next to his attractive, skinny, co-worker.
This experience was only my second time flying. Kevin and I went to Cozumel, Mexico, for our honeymoon and I was terrified. Not so much of flying, but of leaving the country. I had never been out of the state of Missouri before that time, let alone the country. And let alone to a country where English-speaking people were the minority.
But back to San Francisco … I know we’ve been back to San Francisco since that 1991 trip … but I can’t remember the circumstances. I think it was a cruise port, or maybe it was a cruise stop, but I remember taking a taxi and doing an impromptu tour of the city, the Cliff Notes version. Our taxi driver was our tour guide and he was so awesome. I believe this happened in the early 2000’s sometime. So, we’ve seen San Francisco on the surface, but we haven’t really explored San Francisco thoroughly. We would likely never go back now, which is sad, because I remember it being very pretty and certainly interesting, but we have no desire to go to a city that has an app for visitors on places in the city to avoid drug needles and feces.
No thank you.
Plus, I think it’s criminal how Gavin Newsome has contributed, (he’s not the only one – there have been several throughout the years but he’s certainly the most current), to the downfall of the state of California.
Back to the 1991 trip.
The trip ended and we flew back home. I guess it was United Airlines. If Kevin hadn’t found this snippet I would have sworn it was American, because I feel like we’ve always flown American primarily because of the points reward credit card that we use 99% of the time, but it was United, apparently.
Other than this incident, I don’t remember anything weird about the trip. It seemed like it was pretty straight forward. But the moment we reached the Springfield airport, we kept circling the airport. Even with my flying inexperience, I knew something wasn’t right. Why weren’t we landing? What was going on? We circled the airport several times. People were getting antsy, myself included. And the more people got worked up, the more I got nervous. Again, I didn’t really know what was going on but based on the crew and passengers’ reaction, something was off.
Finally, the captain made the announcement: “Attention ladies and gentlemen, we’re having a little trouble getting the landing gear to cooperate. We’re circling the airport until we resolve this issue. We’ll keep you updated.”
Say what??
Okay. Now I could hear grumblings and low murmurs from the passengers. The aircraft’s nervous scale just shot up about 50 points. Were we going to have to land without wheels? How would that look? I guess it would “technically” be a crash landing? How were we supposed to use the oxygen thingies again?
My head is spinning and Kevin is trying to reassure me and I think he grabs my hand, but maybe I’ve seen too many airplane crash disaster movies over the years. The memory is a bit fuzzy.
What’s not fuzzy is I remember a female flight attendant crouching right next to me, (because I had the aisle seat), and lifting a trap door in the floor. I had no idea what I was looking at – mechanical stuff, but I swear I saw the landing gear wheels looking all cozy and docile still nestled within the belly of the airplane.
This may, or may not be true, because I don’t know the first things about planes, and especially back then, so the black thing I saw? Could have been a number of things, who knows if it was actually the airplane wheels.
The flight attendant reaches down into the planes guts and again, I swear I see her cranking something. I’m thinking, “Is she manually cranking the wheels down? Is she qualified to do that?! Is that even possible? I mean, I guess the airplane manufacturer would have some sort of fail-safe system in place for times like this, right??”
Shortly after she fiddled with whatever she was doing, we were able to safely land. I was nervous, but not really scared. I have faith. I’m a Christian. And I trusted God to land us safely – and He did.
But it was a bit of excitement and for a brief moment in time, we bonded with total strangers. Nervous laughter and weak smiles were shared on the plane once we touched down, (with wheels, I might add). And when we stopped at the terminal, everyone clapped with relief.
Apparently, we had been up in the air long enough to trigger a reporter showing up at the airport when we got off the plane. I have no idea why a reporter decided to pick me, out of all the people who got off the plane, to approach and ask questions, but as you can see, it happened. I remember speaking to a reporter, but I was still too amped up on adrenaline to remember what I said. Who knows if I said anything more intelligent than what you see in the news clip, knowing me, probably not. In fact, that poor reporter was probably thinking, “I couldn’t have picked a more articulate person to get a quote from?” Ha!
So, that’s my short claim to fame story. This experience hasn’t soured me on flying but I won’t lie, I was pretty nervous to fly the very next time after this incident.
Your turn: what has been your most memorable flying experience?
Write From Karen 