I'm back from the shore...

And I wish I never left.

Escaping from reality is good for us everyone once in awhile. I learned a few things about myself on this trip. One, I need some help with my mental problems post haste. Two, I am way overweight. Three, teenagers truely are the spawn of the devil.

The flight up truely was the flight from hell. We were supposed to depart Greensboro at 2:50pm. Our finally hurled itself down the runway at 9:15pm, and it wasn't even our plane. Our initial flight was cancelled. Then the flight they re-routed us to was cancelled. The flight that was scheduled to leave before us was on the tarmac for about 2 hours before they unloaded it due to Philladelphia Airport being shut down. When they finally decided that that flight was going to take place they informed us that we would be on that flight. We had to just take empty seats. Once we boarded that plane we discovered that they were training a flight attendant so we would have two on this trip. I was next to a guy that was going to be catching a connecting flight in Philly to Shannon, Ireland. He and his buddies that were behind me were going golfing. Luckily he had flown often. That tidbit will come in handy later in the story.

So we are all loaded on the plane at 7pm-ish. Then a storm rolls in and they can't load our luggage because the bag guys are allowed on the the ramps due to lightening. So we wait about an hour for that to blow over. They they taxi us out to the runway and I look out the window. The biggest, ugliest cloud I'd ever seen rolled in. I pointed this out to the guy next to me and he agreed that were weren't going anywhere anytime soon. His buddies made a crack about the fact that they would cacth their connecting flight assuming we didn't taxi all the way to Philly. So low and behold the Captain comes over the speaker informing us that we are grounded until the weather clears. The flight attendant later informs us that it was a Squall. Apparently Squalls are the worst kinds of storms and we don't fly thru them ever.

But we finally take off at 9:15pm and about 35 to 40 minutes into the 56 minute flight a lady starts down the aisle with one leg. This lady is moving herself along by grabbing the arm rests and hopping from seat to seat. She is also a large lady and is getting winded easy. So by the time she gets to our seat she is completely out of breath and falls to her one knee to pull herself in a half crawl down the rest of the way. I was seated approximately in the middle of the plane. She doesn't make it to the bathroom soon enough and does her business all over herself because the stench soon wofts our way. Did I mention that she was diabetic and hadn't checked her sugar since noon? Yea, so luckily one of my seat mates buddies was a doctor, an orthopedic surgeon to be exact and went to the back to check her out. He informed us that she is in rough shape but should be ok till we make it there. We were only about 15 mins from the airport but there was a storm that we should have gone around but were now going to go thru due to this medical emergency. They had called the ambulance and they were waiting for us at the gate.

So, we start through this turbulance and the captain comes over the loudspeaker and tells the flight attendants to strap in. The trainee heads to her seat but attempts to get doors closed in their little area. The other flight attendant screams at her to strap in and not worry about that stuff from the back of the plane. Then it happens. The plane dropped and when I say dropped I mean, free fell like the Drop Zone rides at the amusement parks. DROPPED. Everyone started crying and silently whispering. Luckily no one started screaming because all pandimonium would have broken loose. But after we dropped for a good 30 seconds we shook violently then dropped again. This went on for about 5 minutes. That may seem like a very short time, but try experiencing that on and airplane dropping and shaking and twisting around, see how long it feels then. So the whole time the guy next to me keeps saying, "this is nothing, just a little turbulance do to the storm. Seriously, I been through worse. This pilot is just hot-footin' it in due to the lady in the back. Everything is fine." That calmed me tremendously. You can not believe how much better I felt having that guy next to me. Later the flight attendant told some people behind us that that was only catagory II turbulance and we could withstand up to IV. And that the pilot never would have put us in jeopardy but he did need to go through the storm rather than around it due to the medical emergency.

I was so proud of myself for not freaking out. I have panic attacks something fearce and hadn't brought any medicine with me. My neice and stepmom, who were sitting together thought they were going to die and that is all I heard about for my entire trip. I just didn't think it was that bad. I guess it was the guy next to me.

On the flight back I got to thinking about the other flight. What if I would have died? It occured to me that I really could careless whether I lived or died. Maybe that is why it didn't bother me. That scares me. I really don't care if I'm alive or dead nor do I think anyone else would. If all three of us would have died, I would be the absolute last person anyone cared about. And that is the gospel truth.