Flying Home From Fiji

Normally when people give you the run down on their trips, they start at the beginning and plug slowly detail by boring detail through their entire trip.  You’re lucky.  I’m starting at the end.  That’s the way I read books so that’s how I’ll write about our great trip to Fiji.  (You’ll just have to wait for a later post to hear about our surviving the cyclone . . . )

First. you need to know that I do not care one little bit for flying.  Or two.  Or three.  To say that flying terrifies me is like saying that water is slightly wet.  My taking Valium is the only way my husband can get me on a plane.

First, I would like to share with you a picture of an Air Pacific plane that is similar to the one that we flew on.  (Click on the picture so that you can see a bigger picture of it.)  Cute little bugger, huh?

Now, here is an airport in Fiji.  Cute little airport, eh?

This isn’t the one that we flew into.  Thank goodness.  I would have had to take 94 Valium pills if we did.

All the passengers were loaded and we were taxing out to the runway ready to take off to come back home.  The pilot came over the intercom and said that due to an engine malfunction we’d have to go back to the hangar to get it fixed.  It would take an hour and then we’d be on our way.

An engine malfunction?  An engine malfunction?  Didn’t he learn in flight school that he doesn’t say things like that to passengers — especially to those who were on Valium?

Instead, couldn’t he have said, “I’m sorry.  We forgot to load toilet paper for the flight.  We have to go back to the hangar to get some.”

Or: “Sorry, I think I left the stove on at home.  I’ve got to go back and check to make sure it’s off.  I’ll be back fast.  It should only take me an hour to go check it.”

Or: “I forgot to kiss my wife good-bye.  I’ll be in deep doo doo when I get back if I don’t go and give her a good-bye kiss.”

All of these reasons would have been perfectly plausible and acceptable.  But no.  Instead he had to use the lame excuse of a malfunctioning engine.

I spent the entire hour imagining just exactly where over the ocean that the engine would fall off.  And if I would die from a metal shard if the plane exploded due to the loss of the engine.  Or, would I die of fright on the way down.  Or would I die as I hit the ocean as I plummeted hundreds of miles an hour into the water that would really feel like concrete.

Lovely, peaceful thoughts, huh?  I had to double my dose of Valium when we finally did take off.

Amazingly, we made it to the Los Angeles International Airport without any incident.  All the engines stayed attached to the airplane like the good little engines that they were meant to be.  Which was good.  I was getting low on Valium.

However, I did make one vow to myself.  When (notice I didn’t say if I said when) I die in a plane crash, I will die with dignity.  I will not yell, nor scream, nor cry uncontrollably.  I don’t want to embarrass my husband — nor myself.  And I’ll be calm because I’ll be drugged up to the hilt with Valium . . .