The Ups and Downs of Flying

I absolutely love to fly. This is not to say that I don't have the occasional case of anxiety before a flight. I do from time to time, but this usually dissipates when the whine of the engines changes to a roar and we begin rolling down the runway on takeoff. This provides among the greatest of adrenaline rushes and is a odd statement coming from someone like me who loathes (ok..maybe "scared of" is a better word choice) roller coasters.

There are two things I don't like about flying. The first is leg room and the second is the "open seating" used by some discount airlines. I don't know why I'm not fond of latter other than the "cattle car" feel to the whole ordeal. Everyone lines up at the gate well before boarding time and it's this mad rush for good seats once boarding starts. It's "mobocracy" at its finest and not for me. I like to know beforehand where I'll be sitting and enjoy the option of changing seats online as needed before the trip. Window seats are great for short excursions and for those long, non-stop fights an aisle or bulkhead seat is a must. I'm six foot-two; I need the legroom. As I'm too cheap to pay for first or business class, I have to make do with whatever leg room options are available in economy. And in some situations, these are of little real benefit. I had an aisle seat last year on the flight from Chicago to Tokyo and it just wasn't sufficent for a 14 hour non-stop excursion.

Apart from the two aforementioned factors, flying is a wonderful part of travel. I consider the adveture under way as soon as I board the plane. And when it comes to type of plane, those big commercial jets are altogether boring compared to some of the smaller planes in which I've ridden.

Probably the most enjoyable flight I've had was when I was in South America a few years back doing some public health consulting work. As part of our project, we did an assessment of some villages in the interior of the country and to reach this otherwise inaccessible region, rented a plane (complete with pilot for no addtional charge!) from a small, local company. It was a old twin engine prop (an Islander, I believe) that appeared to have long since past its prime. Not something to inspire confidence, particularly given the observation that the ground crew was reinstalling the seats when we arrived. It served dual purpose runs into the interior: light cargo and/or small groups of passengers. So after weighing the passengers as a group and assigning seats to distribute the weight evenly we were off.

Southward we flew at a relatively low altitude. High enough to clear low mountain ridges (usually with a little more climbing involved), but still low enough for ease of observation below. We followed the course of a river for a portion of the flight then banked left over nothing but jungle. No roads, no houses, nothing but canopy as far as the eye could see. Eventually, we began to decend and the translator annouced that we were landing.

"Landing???" I thought. "Where?" We still couldn't see anything below other than jungle, but as we banked sharply there appeared in the near distance a narrow sliver of brown slicing through the green. A small dirt runway. So in a cloud of dust we landed (rather bumpily) and collectively were glad to be back on the ground. It was nonetheless a remarkably enjoyable flight and was one of the factors contributing to the adventurous nature of the time in South America, along with travelling far upriver in traditional dugout canoes to visit other remote villages, but that's a story for another day.