Fly Me Courageous

I was just reading an older article by a favorite writer of mine about flying and being afraid of flying. It was a pretty good read. I have flown a fair number of times. A lot of people have, so there isn't anything that special about it. Early on in my flying career I was really frightened about the entire thing. I do not like heights, they are not my thing. But after so many flights I started learning how to relax. Later on I actually got to where I enjoyed the flying part ...almost as much as the landing has just ended part. I never really got around to liking the trudging through the parking lot part though.

You see nothing really bad ever happened. Obviously. I am still here. I got to thinking. What was my worst, most scariest experience flying? That one is easy. It was the time I flew into Atlanta from Bristol. There was this huge summer thunderstorm sitting right on Hartsfield. We circled the airport for what felt like hours, bouncing over thermals and banking ominously through the suddenly dark spaces created by dense clouds of rain, waiting for the wind to generate enough static electricity to create a massive lightning bolt and blow us from the sky. At least that is how it looked to me.
I was really doing reasonably okay until I decided to get brave and look out the window. You couldn't see the ground for all the grey clouds and for the moment we were in bright sunlight away from higher thunder clouds. That was when I made my mistake. For some reason I imagined Wile E Coyote falling through the clouds, cutting a Wile E Coyote silhouette where he passed, just like all those cartoons. That was really all it took. I was done after that.

Well, it was my favorite landing anyway.