The (dim) pleasures of traveling
March 17, 2003 | 12:00am
I’ve always been a white-knuckles airline traveler.
Actually, I wasn’t always this way. I remember my first extended business trip to the States, when I had to fly down from New York to Miami. I took one of the old Eastern Airlines puddle-jumpers, one that must have touched down and taken off at least half a dozen times over a route that, nonstop, wouldn’t exceed a few hours.
It seemed like it took half a day just to cover the distance. I guess the reason I didn’t mind was because of the novelty of the experience, as well as my blissful unawareness that every landing and take-off is really an opportunity for your Maker to snatch you from the sky.
Another time, I caught an old L-1011 that had flown in from Europe, on its final leg coast-to-coast from New York to California. It was a battered old machine that had seen many, many better days–the overhead bins incessantly creaked and the plane rolled from side to side with every little gust of turbulence.
I was seated all the way at the back, which is usually where you get to feel every little bump and grind of the trip. However, it was midnight and I was liberally fuelled by alcoholic spirits. I simply stretched out on the seat and slept all the way through.
Where I think my whole relationship with planes and flying began to fall apart was on a business trip to Denver, perched high atop the snowy, windy Rocky Mountains.
Ironically, I was on my way to a bankers’ briefing on the proposed new Denver international airport, a futuristic structure with multiple runways far enough apart to allow all-weather instrument landings. Since Denver was an important hub, this improvement would also relieve weather-induced congestion at interconnected airports all over the country.
To this day I firmly believe that the city officials who organized the briefing somehow connived with the Indian tribal medicine men in the area to whip up a grade-A blizzard at the precise time of my arrival. I could see nothing but white sheets of snow outside my window, the plane bouncing up and down as the pilot blindly sought to bring the plane home in one piece.
It didn’t help that my seatmate happened to be an old Air Force pilot who regaled me with accounts of wind shear and the rocky geography of the mountains rushing up to meet us. It was only after the wheels touched ground that visibility cleared up enough for us to see the airport building in the distance.
I marched into the briefing room fully convinced that the new airport was an essential addition to civilized life. In the end, however, the deal structure didn’t meet my credit standards – I begged off, and the financing later went bad. Serves them right, of course, those sneaky city officials and their medicine men.
Two other experiences cemented my conviction that, if God had intended for man to fly, He would have given us wings in the first place.
One was a flight to Houston, the hot and humid oil rigger’s town that sits smack in the middle of Texas "tornado alley." It was summer, the traditional season of thunderstorms, and as we approached from the north I could see the number of storms coiled like venomous serpents above the sprawling city.
For some unfathomable reason, it seemed to me that the pilot decided to fly into as many thunderstorms as he could, instead of avoiding them. So there we were for a full hour, circling alternately over the Texas flatland and the Gulf of Mexico while awaiting clearance to land, as the pilot took his hapless passengers first into one, then into another cauldron of seething black cloud and treacherous white lightning.
Perhaps it was his way of testing the integrity of his aircraft in real time. Who knows what brought about that particular malevolence?
Much more recently, I was on a PAL flight on my way back from Singapore. As we descended over Manila Bay, I could feel the wind literally pushing down on the plane from above. More than once the plane dropped abruptly, causing gasps and nervous laughter from my otherwise jaded fellow business travelers.
Just as we crossed the shoreline, the pilot announced, to my immense relief, that he was taking us back up and trying another approach from the opposite direction. We circled back over Laguna de Bay and the brown hills of Antipolo, coming in smooth as silk to a nice three-point touchdown.
Now why is it always easier to arrive from the east than from the west? That should be an interesting riddle for the geomancer as well as the climatologist.
These days, the new vicissitudes introduced by the tragedy of 9/11 have made the flying experience unpleasant as much for man-made reasons as for natural ones.
It never fails whenever I’m traveling within the US. As soon as I check myself in at the airline counter, I’m asked to leave the line and bring my checked-in luggage to a special inspection area. Together with a few other unfortunate souls, we drag our heavy bags over for inspection, eyes downcast, guiltily avoiding the stares from the whispering crowd.
Later, after I pass through the X-ray machine with my carry-on items, I’m invariably asked to step aside, take off my shoes for minute inspection, and lift my arms in the air like a collared criminal while they bodily frisk me. If only it were some voluptuous blonde running her hands over me whose neckline I could peer down at –but no such luck so far.
When I finally get to the departure gate and turn over my boarding pass to the ground steward, once again I’m called out of line, this time to offer up my carry-on bags for one last look-see. Naturally, this delay means that the overhead bins are full when I do get on the plane.
To be fair, the airlines make sure that these exceptional searches are conducted as randomly as possible. In addition to the usual dark-skinned, foreign-accented, bearded males who’re natural candidates, I’ve seen airport security single out the elderly on wheelchairs, soldiers in uniform, mothers with children, in every conceivable hue from cream to tangerine.
Alas, these troubled times make racial profilers of us all. When I see someone waved through who I think should be searched – no matter that his accent or skin color are no different from mine–I become nervous. Hell, even I would want myself searched if I didn’t know myself any better.
This month I’m supposed to fly to New York for a pretty important business meeting. Ordinarily I‘d be looking forward to it, not least because I get to see my first-born son and my last-born brother, as well of course as walking the familiar streets of Manhattan under its fabled skyline.
This time, though, the prospect of leaving weighs heavily on me. The length of the trip has become less bearable, perhaps because one’s aging bones are settled less easily into an airline seat. The disruption it wreaks on my biological clock will take longer to mend.
Most of all, the usual trepidation that fills my mind as I strap myself into the belly of this metal projectile and prepare to hurtle halfway around the world in an unending nighttime can only be amplified by the knowledge that somewhere out there, miles under me, there are men who conspire to no meaner end than to bring with them as many innocents as they can to the gates of their version of paradise.
Where are the joys of videoconferencing when you need it? Or, more ambitiously, how I’d prefer instead to be like Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise, who, whenever he wanted to get somewhere in a hurry, only had to issue a simple and peremptory command:
"Beam me down, Scotty!"
Actually, I wasn’t always this way. I remember my first extended business trip to the States, when I had to fly down from New York to Miami. I took one of the old Eastern Airlines puddle-jumpers, one that must have touched down and taken off at least half a dozen times over a route that, nonstop, wouldn’t exceed a few hours.
It seemed like it took half a day just to cover the distance. I guess the reason I didn’t mind was because of the novelty of the experience, as well as my blissful unawareness that every landing and take-off is really an opportunity for your Maker to snatch you from the sky.
Another time, I caught an old L-1011 that had flown in from Europe, on its final leg coast-to-coast from New York to California. It was a battered old machine that had seen many, many better days–the overhead bins incessantly creaked and the plane rolled from side to side with every little gust of turbulence.
I was seated all the way at the back, which is usually where you get to feel every little bump and grind of the trip. However, it was midnight and I was liberally fuelled by alcoholic spirits. I simply stretched out on the seat and slept all the way through.
Ironically, I was on my way to a bankers’ briefing on the proposed new Denver international airport, a futuristic structure with multiple runways far enough apart to allow all-weather instrument landings. Since Denver was an important hub, this improvement would also relieve weather-induced congestion at interconnected airports all over the country.
To this day I firmly believe that the city officials who organized the briefing somehow connived with the Indian tribal medicine men in the area to whip up a grade-A blizzard at the precise time of my arrival. I could see nothing but white sheets of snow outside my window, the plane bouncing up and down as the pilot blindly sought to bring the plane home in one piece.
It didn’t help that my seatmate happened to be an old Air Force pilot who regaled me with accounts of wind shear and the rocky geography of the mountains rushing up to meet us. It was only after the wheels touched ground that visibility cleared up enough for us to see the airport building in the distance.
I marched into the briefing room fully convinced that the new airport was an essential addition to civilized life. In the end, however, the deal structure didn’t meet my credit standards – I begged off, and the financing later went bad. Serves them right, of course, those sneaky city officials and their medicine men.
One was a flight to Houston, the hot and humid oil rigger’s town that sits smack in the middle of Texas "tornado alley." It was summer, the traditional season of thunderstorms, and as we approached from the north I could see the number of storms coiled like venomous serpents above the sprawling city.
For some unfathomable reason, it seemed to me that the pilot decided to fly into as many thunderstorms as he could, instead of avoiding them. So there we were for a full hour, circling alternately over the Texas flatland and the Gulf of Mexico while awaiting clearance to land, as the pilot took his hapless passengers first into one, then into another cauldron of seething black cloud and treacherous white lightning.
Perhaps it was his way of testing the integrity of his aircraft in real time. Who knows what brought about that particular malevolence?
Much more recently, I was on a PAL flight on my way back from Singapore. As we descended over Manila Bay, I could feel the wind literally pushing down on the plane from above. More than once the plane dropped abruptly, causing gasps and nervous laughter from my otherwise jaded fellow business travelers.
Just as we crossed the shoreline, the pilot announced, to my immense relief, that he was taking us back up and trying another approach from the opposite direction. We circled back over Laguna de Bay and the brown hills of Antipolo, coming in smooth as silk to a nice three-point touchdown.
Now why is it always easier to arrive from the east than from the west? That should be an interesting riddle for the geomancer as well as the climatologist.
It never fails whenever I’m traveling within the US. As soon as I check myself in at the airline counter, I’m asked to leave the line and bring my checked-in luggage to a special inspection area. Together with a few other unfortunate souls, we drag our heavy bags over for inspection, eyes downcast, guiltily avoiding the stares from the whispering crowd.
Later, after I pass through the X-ray machine with my carry-on items, I’m invariably asked to step aside, take off my shoes for minute inspection, and lift my arms in the air like a collared criminal while they bodily frisk me. If only it were some voluptuous blonde running her hands over me whose neckline I could peer down at –but no such luck so far.
When I finally get to the departure gate and turn over my boarding pass to the ground steward, once again I’m called out of line, this time to offer up my carry-on bags for one last look-see. Naturally, this delay means that the overhead bins are full when I do get on the plane.
To be fair, the airlines make sure that these exceptional searches are conducted as randomly as possible. In addition to the usual dark-skinned, foreign-accented, bearded males who’re natural candidates, I’ve seen airport security single out the elderly on wheelchairs, soldiers in uniform, mothers with children, in every conceivable hue from cream to tangerine.
Alas, these troubled times make racial profilers of us all. When I see someone waved through who I think should be searched – no matter that his accent or skin color are no different from mine–I become nervous. Hell, even I would want myself searched if I didn’t know myself any better.
This time, though, the prospect of leaving weighs heavily on me. The length of the trip has become less bearable, perhaps because one’s aging bones are settled less easily into an airline seat. The disruption it wreaks on my biological clock will take longer to mend.
Most of all, the usual trepidation that fills my mind as I strap myself into the belly of this metal projectile and prepare to hurtle halfway around the world in an unending nighttime can only be amplified by the knowledge that somewhere out there, miles under me, there are men who conspire to no meaner end than to bring with them as many innocents as they can to the gates of their version of paradise.
Where are the joys of videoconferencing when you need it? Or, more ambitiously, how I’d prefer instead to be like Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise, who, whenever he wanted to get somewhere in a hurry, only had to issue a simple and peremptory command:
"Beam me down, Scotty!"
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