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for frogs of war because she asked.
Great big airplanes are really different from little airplanes. You're more likely to be riding in a great big airplane if you're flying a longer distance. The little airplanes that took me between Southern regional airports were almost like school field trip buses -- people moving around, talking, sharing gum and life stories. The big airplanes are more like commuter trains. People are civil, and you might get to talking, but unless it's really obvious that the feeling is mutual that you both want to talk, you'll tend to be left alone.
There is always a baby crying at takeoff and landing. They can't help it. It hurts their ears. Nursing, sucking on a bottle or candy or chewing gum (for older people, those last two) help, but it still feels weird.
I'm slowly getting over the feeling that takeoff or landing is death. Not that the plane will crash: the sensation feels like dying. The pressure, the loud white noise (though honestly I think acceleration/deceleration is more sort of brown, but brown like beach sand when it's brown, not brown like dirt or bark), the scream of whatever it is -- jets startoing up/shutting down? landing gear? The hum of the engines in flight is more like a dreamscapoe noise, but it's a lot like the death dreams I have. Anyway, I get an adrenaline rush during takeoff and landing, but it's elemental, not mistrust. Turbulence feels very dangerous too, even if it's just a little, because there's a bump and for a nanosecond you seem to be in free fall (are you? It seems like that might be true)and there's a feeling of shift and you might end up anywhere in the space-time continuum at all. Can you tell how much my worldview has been shaped by reading a lot of science fiction at an early age? Again, this is an elemental feeling, not a matter of belief.
Most of the time while ypou're actually flying there's not much sensation of movement. Now and then the plane banks for no special reason, and you feel that as you would in a car, except you don't slide in your seat: it's just a tugging sensation.
Even the biggest planes are small inside. When the flight crew brings around those carts they barely fit in the aisles. The carts are much heavier than you'd think they would be for the purpose, but I think that's on purpose so that when they put the brakes on the wheels there's a lot more inertia and the carts are much less likely to break free.
On the flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco there was a woman who kept running off to the bar next to the departure gate and drinking one more drink until she was late for boarding. She made a little fuss abou how she didn't really even want to get on the flight but her friends made her come. She was maybe thirty, thirty-five, dolled up with teased blond hair and skin about to get leathery. Then she kept buying more drinks on the plane and I wondered why they didn' cut her off -- fear of a worse scene? -- and she kept trying to get this somewhat younger man to engage with her. She kind of indsulted his looks and his longish hair and schemed on getting his hat from him. I think she thought she was being seductive. He came further back in the plane after a while and pretended that this other young guy was a friend of his, and spent the rest of the flight kind of hiding from the drunk woman.
My seat mates to Las Vegas included a very young woman from a tiny town in Alabama who was on her way to visit friends she had made while her husband was assigned to the base outside of town. She said Las Vegas was gorgeous at night and hideous by day. I don't know: I've never been there. I was interested in getting her to talk about the desert but they only went out into the desert to do a little four-wheeling so there was nothing to talk about there. She said she had a job at the PX to keep herself busy while her husband was deployed (she kind of implied she didn't really think the money was crucial), because she was afraid to go into town much because it was such a big city and she thought she might get lost. She was glad to be living in Alabama again. I think her husband was in Iraq again. She seemed very young to have school-aged children.
Airplane bathrooms are so small that I think a person any fatter than me would have a really hard time in one. They creep me out because after you flush, where does it go? I've heard of "blue ice" that falls from airplanes, and that sometimes it includes material from the toilets, but I don't suppose that happens often, right? The bathrooms on the flights I've been on have been clean enough, but very worn. So the many little flaps on the little compartments don' close quite right, the soap dispenser is wonky, the steel mirror is a bit fogged, the plastic a little aged looking. The rest of the plane usually looks newer. Though the seat cover sometimes pulls from its velcro moorings a bit.
The window is so small and thick that you really get this tiny tiny glimpse of the land below. The colors of the land are a bit washed out, in my experience, so the whole effect is as if you were looking through the magic ivory tube of the arabian nights.
The whole airplane smells lightly of a sweet disinfectant.
Sound is hushed in the airplane. The engine noise is dominant but it seems very far away. You can hardly hear voices. They seem to come from far away too, adding to the dreamlike experience.
The sexy stewardesses of my youth have been replaced by solid working people (which of course they always were but they had to have a sexy image there for a long time). They are all ages, colors, and sexes.
Every flight, without exceptiomn, has the safety demonstration. Sometimes this is a flight crew person reading the instructions while someone acts them out oin very stylized, stiff gestures. Sometimes it's just like that with a recording. Lately there's also a slide show or a movie to go with it, sometimes. And you're supposed to read over the safety card that's in the weird tight pocket on the back of the seat in front of you, but few people do. I do. I'm a firm believer in fire drills, and reading that card is just like doing a fire drill.
It's not terribly reassuring, actually. The escape routes look very difficult and unlikely.
If you're sitting in a row where the escape route is you have to tell the stewardess whether you feel up to or willing to help out in case of a needed escape. One one flight I saw a perfectly healthy-looking man in the prime of his life switch seats. So there was a story there I did not get to know.
I'm sure there will be more airplane stories I haven't thought of. I've been holding back trying to write a complete piece for you, but that's silly. "Don't try to get it right: get it written."
Great big airplanes are really different from little airplanes. You're more likely to be riding in a great big airplane if you're flying a longer distance. The little airplanes that took me between Southern regional airports were almost like school field trip buses -- people moving around, talking, sharing gum and life stories. The big airplanes are more like commuter trains. People are civil, and you might get to talking, but unless it's really obvious that the feeling is mutual that you both want to talk, you'll tend to be left alone.
There is always a baby crying at takeoff and landing. They can't help it. It hurts their ears. Nursing, sucking on a bottle or candy or chewing gum (for older people, those last two) help, but it still feels weird.
I'm slowly getting over the feeling that takeoff or landing is death. Not that the plane will crash: the sensation feels like dying. The pressure, the loud white noise (though honestly I think acceleration/deceleration is more sort of brown, but brown like beach sand when it's brown, not brown like dirt or bark), the scream of whatever it is -- jets startoing up/shutting down? landing gear? The hum of the engines in flight is more like a dreamscapoe noise, but it's a lot like the death dreams I have. Anyway, I get an adrenaline rush during takeoff and landing, but it's elemental, not mistrust. Turbulence feels very dangerous too, even if it's just a little, because there's a bump and for a nanosecond you seem to be in free fall (are you? It seems like that might be true)and there's a feeling of shift and you might end up anywhere in the space-time continuum at all. Can you tell how much my worldview has been shaped by reading a lot of science fiction at an early age? Again, this is an elemental feeling, not a matter of belief.
Most of the time while ypou're actually flying there's not much sensation of movement. Now and then the plane banks for no special reason, and you feel that as you would in a car, except you don't slide in your seat: it's just a tugging sensation.
Even the biggest planes are small inside. When the flight crew brings around those carts they barely fit in the aisles. The carts are much heavier than you'd think they would be for the purpose, but I think that's on purpose so that when they put the brakes on the wheels there's a lot more inertia and the carts are much less likely to break free.
On the flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco there was a woman who kept running off to the bar next to the departure gate and drinking one more drink until she was late for boarding. She made a little fuss abou how she didn't really even want to get on the flight but her friends made her come. She was maybe thirty, thirty-five, dolled up with teased blond hair and skin about to get leathery. Then she kept buying more drinks on the plane and I wondered why they didn' cut her off -- fear of a worse scene? -- and she kept trying to get this somewhat younger man to engage with her. She kind of indsulted his looks and his longish hair and schemed on getting his hat from him. I think she thought she was being seductive. He came further back in the plane after a while and pretended that this other young guy was a friend of his, and spent the rest of the flight kind of hiding from the drunk woman.
My seat mates to Las Vegas included a very young woman from a tiny town in Alabama who was on her way to visit friends she had made while her husband was assigned to the base outside of town. She said Las Vegas was gorgeous at night and hideous by day. I don't know: I've never been there. I was interested in getting her to talk about the desert but they only went out into the desert to do a little four-wheeling so there was nothing to talk about there. She said she had a job at the PX to keep herself busy while her husband was deployed (she kind of implied she didn't really think the money was crucial), because she was afraid to go into town much because it was such a big city and she thought she might get lost. She was glad to be living in Alabama again. I think her husband was in Iraq again. She seemed very young to have school-aged children.
Airplane bathrooms are so small that I think a person any fatter than me would have a really hard time in one. They creep me out because after you flush, where does it go? I've heard of "blue ice" that falls from airplanes, and that sometimes it includes material from the toilets, but I don't suppose that happens often, right? The bathrooms on the flights I've been on have been clean enough, but very worn. So the many little flaps on the little compartments don' close quite right, the soap dispenser is wonky, the steel mirror is a bit fogged, the plastic a little aged looking. The rest of the plane usually looks newer. Though the seat cover sometimes pulls from its velcro moorings a bit.
The window is so small and thick that you really get this tiny tiny glimpse of the land below. The colors of the land are a bit washed out, in my experience, so the whole effect is as if you were looking through the magic ivory tube of the arabian nights.
The whole airplane smells lightly of a sweet disinfectant.
Sound is hushed in the airplane. The engine noise is dominant but it seems very far away. You can hardly hear voices. They seem to come from far away too, adding to the dreamlike experience.
The sexy stewardesses of my youth have been replaced by solid working people (which of course they always were but they had to have a sexy image there for a long time). They are all ages, colors, and sexes.
Every flight, without exceptiomn, has the safety demonstration. Sometimes this is a flight crew person reading the instructions while someone acts them out oin very stylized, stiff gestures. Sometimes it's just like that with a recording. Lately there's also a slide show or a movie to go with it, sometimes. And you're supposed to read over the safety card that's in the weird tight pocket on the back of the seat in front of you, but few people do. I do. I'm a firm believer in fire drills, and reading that card is just like doing a fire drill.
It's not terribly reassuring, actually. The escape routes look very difficult and unlikely.
If you're sitting in a row where the escape route is you have to tell the stewardess whether you feel up to or willing to help out in case of a needed escape. One one flight I saw a perfectly healthy-looking man in the prime of his life switch seats. So there was a story there I did not get to know.
I'm sure there will be more airplane stories I haven't thought of. I've been holding back trying to write a complete piece for you, but that's silly. "Don't try to get it right: get it written."
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