I am a bad flyer. Well, maybe not bad, but certainly not great. I wouldn't really call it a phobia or anything. I don't freak out and start hyperventilating when I enter an airport terminal, or have a panic attack whenever I hear the chirpy "ping!" of the seatbelt sign coming on, and I don't have recurring nightmares where I'm trapped in an endlessly looping safety demonstration performed by evil clowns in flight attendant uniforms.
 |
| Or Richard Simmons |
I'm just - hell, I always have been - acutely aware of the possible (and potentially fatal) complications of air travel. Not that I have any reason to be - I've been on a few flights in my life, and I've never had anything but the smoothest of sailing. A little bit of minor turbulence, but nothing to make me think that there's a gremlin on the side of the plane pulling the engines apart. But still, as soon as those wheels leave the ground, my mind is turning over all the spectacular ways my fellow passengers and I could fall out of the sky like the arrogant little Icaruses we are.
Engines could fail, the cabin could depressurise, gravity could decide that it's not going to ignore us any longer. An aeroplane is a marvel of human engineering that - as far as I know - runs on magic and prayers to the the sky god, and if any one part of whatever makes it work stops, we're done for. 'Anything that can go wrong will'. If that's Murphy's Law, then I'm his legal partner. Murphy & Pemberton, attorneys at 'you're screwed'.
This has always been my secret. I haven't tried to hide it, I've just never really mentioned it before. Even Tash didn't know until a few weeks ago. But it's true. Since leaving New Zealand, I wasn't worrying out about going to Asia. About entering a whole new climate and culture where I don't speak the language. About taking the first huge leap into our adventure of a lifetime. I was worrying about flying to Asia. It's the longest flight I've ever taken, on the biggest plane I've ever been on. To be honest, it was liberating. I could think clearly about the big stuff because I was worrying about something so small.
The two nights before our flight, we barely slept. We were in a noisy, stuffy, cramped dorm room with a big loud Englishman who snored right up until his 5am alarm every morning. So trust me, when we got to Melbourne airport for our 1:30am flight, we were pretty miserable and pretty much dead. This was pretty much the best thing that could have happened to me, because it meant that I was too exhausted to care about the fact that holy crap I'm about to get on a plane for 7 hours!!!
Once we were in the air, the flight was actually pretty good. Remember how I said I'd never been on a plane that big? Turns out a bigger plane gives you a smoother, more stable flight - as opposed to just being bigger so it can kill more people at once. When we touched down in Kuala Lumpur, I stepped onto the tarmac with my head held high - right up until I remembered that we still had to fly to Bangkok, this time in a smaller plane - the kind that really lets you feel all the bumps and jumps on the way.
But what do you know? During the entire 3 hour flight time, I wasn't worried for a minute. It could have been that there wasn't any turbulence the entire way along, it could have been that I was preoccupied thinking about arriving in Thailand - it could have been the fact that I hadn't slept in 28 hours. But it also could have been that by making it through the longest flight of my life so far without a hitch, I'm more confident in the air than I ever thought I could be. Of course, after all of this, our next flight won't be for at least 4 months at the earliest, but still.
Have I conquered my fear of flying? Only time will tell...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for reading. If you liked the article and want to see more like it – let us know down in the comments. If you want to follow along with us - you can subscribe to our email feed down below, and be sure to check us out on facebook or follow us on twitter.
If the pretty pictures caught your eye and you would like to see more travel photography hop on over to flickr or for our daily oddities check out our instagram feed.
As always – Don’t Forget To Be Awesome!
No comments:
Post a Comment