Tuesday, March 4, 2008

I'm go-in' ona jet plane...don't know when I'll be back again

As of Wednesday afternoon (weather permitting), I'm off to Peru. Now you might be asking yourself "Well what does that have to do with me?" And to that, my answer would be, "Nothing. This is my blog, so I'll talk about myself. And by the way, who are you in the first place?"

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm not particularly thrilled with the whole idea of flying. Each time I fly, I pack a couple of books and fill up my mp3 player in the hopes that I'll just sit in my seat, relax, read a book and listen to music. Nope! Instead I stare out the window and not move in the hopes that I won't accidentally trigger turbulence. Yes, that's totally rational in my mind...

So I've gone through the routine again of charging my mp3 (full of classical music to calm me), bought some books (Jon Stewart, a sci-fi book and a book on photography), and I'm fully ready to take on the flying experience...not.

I think I've discovered the origins of my stress and fear, though. I think it has to do with how my family deals with the ordeal of flying in the first place. Yes, I'm calling it an "ordeal" because that's how they treat it. So far, I've had my mother, father and a couple of friends ask me to call them to "say goodbye." How's that for sounding a bit fatalistic. I'm going in a plane, not in a casket! Hell, some are calling this my "final blog post". Geez, am I going to the electric chair tomorrow?

But that's how I've been made to feel since I was a kid. There was the "farewell dinner", the "say goodbye" calls and visits, and this pall over everyone as there was the "last hug and kiss." Driving to the airport was always this solemn affair like we were being driven to our deaths. In addition, there was the added stress of do we have our tickets; do we have our passports; are we going to be on time; oh, and do we have our tickets...

So you know what? I say screw it! Tomorrow I'm going to enjoy my flight! It's a non-stop, 8+ hour flight from Toronto to Lima. It leaves in the afternoon, so I'm going to enjoy it, watch the movie, listen to my music, read my book a bit and just generally enjoy the fact I'm going on vacation and I don't have to do any of the driving or anything else.

...or not.

See ya on the other side of next week, folks!

Jeff

3 comments:

Unknown said...

let me know how it goes. I hate flying too. I find the whole experience overwhelming. Even just being in an airport like I was last weekend picking up puppy I was nervous for some reason.

{sam} said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

(How rude! My comment was deleted!)

Good luck Jeff - take some awesome pictures. I'll be looking for some inspiration!