Taking Off

(Editor's note: I wrote this about 9 days ago on my flight out to Ireland. I'm posting it now because it's my blog and not yours and I make the rules and you should just shut up. There'll be something else coming later this week)

The first thought I had taking off was, “Wow, I haven’t been on a plane in a while.”

The second, somewhat more morbid thought, was, “Wow, we could all crash into the ocean and die. Oh shit.”

The third was, “How am I gonna sleep now?”

Welcome to my brain for the first twenty minutes of our flight to Ireland.

My brother is studying abroad in Norwich, England, and my mother used this as a good excuse to finally take a family vacation to Europe. It was me, my mother and grandmother, all crammed into coach on my first ever cross-continental flight.

I’ve never been to Europe. Never been outside North America, either. Hell, aside from a two-day portion of a family road trip that took us to Canada’s side of Niagra Falls when I was 12, I have yet to set foot outside the land of the free and the home of the 70-ounce slurpee. My exposure to foreign culture essentially boils down to the “Foods of the World” part of Epcot and the part of the South Park movie where Cartman sings about Kyle’s mom in different languages.

I had a couple chances. In high school, I was slated to travel to Germany for American Music Abroad with the school symphonic band (TUBAS ON TOUR, BITCH). But the fund my mom and I had to get me there instead went towards the repair of my mother’s friend’s new car, which I smacked into while whipping out of my parking spot on the way to a basketball game. I also had a chance to study aboard in Ireland my final semester of college, but passed so I could be the sports editor of my college newspaper instead. I figured this would be a better choice in my pursuit of a journalism career and would aid me in my job search after college. As you may know, that’s going pretty well so far.

 So when my mom suggested we visit my brother, I decided I couldn’t push it off any more. Everyone who has more maturity and life experience keeps telling me to travel while I’m young, because it only gets more difficult and more expensive. Therefore, before I decide to settle down, start a family, and breed a dozen children like a good Catholic, I had to go.

I’m not afraid of flying. I’ve been on short flights between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and longer flights from Atlanta to Vegas. The mere act of going through security, boarding the giant, metal bird and watching us rise off the ground from a window seat usually doesn’t bother me.

But for some reason, I got spooked this time. Maybe it was because it’s been a few years since I’ve had to fly. I travel by car most of the time now. Renting a car and driving where I need to go is usually the same price or cheaper than taking the skies, and it gives me more freedom when I get to my destination. My friends don’t have to taxi me around, and I’m not a slave to public transportation, which I find to be unreliable, uncomfortable, and usually far more expensive than something unreliable and uncomfortable should be. (Otherwise, I have no thoughts on public transportation)

Maybe it was the delay. One of the runways was closed for construction, so our takeoff time was pushed back about an hour and a half, enough time for me to watch nearly three-quarters of the movie “In a World…” from my seat. Enough time to realize how fucking spoiled rotten I am to be watching a move in an airplane while I also have a laptop, iPod and books with me to keep me entertained. This is why the terrorists hate us.

But I’m going with the third option – we’re flying over an ocean holy crap oh my God.

Subliminally, the missing Malaysian Airlines flight and the images of Captain Sullenberger’s downed aircraft could have been tugging at my psyche, but even still, there’s something downright eerie about flying over the ocean at night. Where do we land in case of an emergency? Are we gonna have time to whip around and hit the Caribbean or Greenland or Iceland or an aircraft carrier the back of a whale or something? What if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is our captain? Has he learned since last time?

At moments like this, my mind doesn’t consider that transatlantic flights happen every day without a hitch, the same way my mind didn’t consider that thousands of people stand on the reinforced glass ledge out over the edge of the Willis Tower in Chicago the day I staggered out onto it, swearing like a sailor in fear around a couple dozen kids and their parents.

And I have to sleep now? With the time change, our flight’s going to land at 7 AM, at which point I need to be awake and relatively alert to help navigate to our inn. I have about three hours until then. At most, I’ll probably sleep for 45 minutes. I can’t sleep on planes or moving vehicles. I’ve tried several times. It doesn’t work. My back tightens and clenches like an angry man’s fist while sitting upright, and I can’t get comfortable enough, so my best bet is to at least get something productive done.

Of course, now I’m complaining about not being able to sleep on our state-of-the-art aircraft where I’m about to be offered dinner and a drink while watching “American Hustle” out of the corner of my eye and tapping away at my laptop. So it goes.

I saw a video recently of two elderly Dutch women flying for the first time in their lives. For one reason or another, they’d never had any reason to board a plane until a pair of online filmmakers taped them on a first-class flight to Madrid. The women marveled at the takeoff, the turbulence, and the amazing view. When they landed, one called her husband and began sobbing in joy as she recounted the experience.

That kind of amazement still exists. And it’s moments like that I try to remember when I get perturbed by minor inconveniences. Yeah, maybe I can’t sleep well, but I can’t sleep well on this enormous steel contraption that’s going to get me from the east coast of the United States to the west coast of Ireland in a hundredth of the time it took a few hundred years ago. And if I’m tired, it will be a minor hiccup on the trip of a lifetime.