Excitable Boy

This weekend I am skipping merrily off to Rapid City, South Dakota, to attend a friend's wedding. Sometime next week, expect a full debriefing/after-action report on the various acts of mayhem and tomfoolery that will shortly be occurring in the American west.

But first, I have to actually get to South Dakota. And I do not like to fly, not one single bit. I don't even like it when friends, family or other loved ones fly. The thought of shooting through the air in a giant metal sausage stuffed with people at several hundreds of miles per hour fills my always over-thinky brainbox with thoughts of mortality and abrupt endings.

Now, the funny thing is, I perform the actual flying bit without hesitation; it's not like I'm that white-knuckled pasty-faced panicky flyer that noone wants to sit near. I'm simply very... nervous, until I touch ground again. And if someone I know is flying, I worry until I hear they've arrived safely. Oddly enough, this dislike of flying didn't set in until my mid-twenties, and odder still, since that time I've actually hurled my self out of a perfectly good airplane at 14,000 feet. But flying commercially continues to make me uncomfortable.

I can only conclude the the issue is one of control - or rather the lack of control I feel zipping about in the above mentioned metal sausage. If anything goes wrong, there's nothing - absolutely nothing - you can do but hang on for the ride. At least jumping out of an airplane, I knew that whether or not I touched down safely was ultimately up to me. No such option if you're flying the friendly skies.

So, my loyal half-dozen, this coming Friday and Monday send me some good vibrations so that the fates grant me perfect harmony.