Well, folks, I did make it back from Texas, safe and sound, although, according to one of my oldest known friends, the "sound" part is an arguable point. She thought I should go and come back the way I was before. Crazy after all these years, I guess.

My flights actually went well. I didn't throw a huge fit. I didn't try to claw my way out the window. We didn't crash or have smoke in the plane. I didn't have to sit next to anyone who was mean, too chatty, under-chatty, rude, or a moron. I didn't have someone sprawling over into my seat nor had any annoying children screaming. All the passengers and children were very-well behaved.

But could I sleep? Eh, not so much.


There's this stuff called "turbulence," which sounds much like flatulence, if you ask me. No, no, my gut was fine this time, surprisingly, but those bumps and little drops in altitude freaked me out just a bit.

As my husband describes it, "Whenever we'd have turbulence and the plane would shake, she'd go (arms flailing) and her eyes would get big."

Well, yeah. I think if a plane starts to crash, one of the things that might happen would be shaking. Duh. But what do I know?

During our flight into Oklahoma City (my son lives halfway between Dallas and Oklahoma, and since the direct flight was more appealing, we flew into Oklahoma City), I felt the descent before the pilot told us. Somehow, when you're sitting near the back of the plane, it looks like the front of the plane is visibly pointing down. I don't like the feeling when I'm up in the air and not expecting it. I'm sure it's an exaggerated thing in my somewhat unsound mind, but still, I don't like it. Nor do I enjoy hearing the loud roar of the engines only to hear them get quiet while it simultaneously seems to slow down. Again, the crashing thoughts set in. Figuratively and somewhat literally.

As we were descending into Oklahoma, I started hearing a beep beep beeping sound a few times. THAT freaked me out, too, because it sounded like some sort of alarm. We were still up pretty high, so, you know again with the crashing thoughts.

I still don't know what that beeping stuff was all about; I figured it was the routine of descending.

But then why didn't I hear it on the way into BWI? Hmmmm. Whatever it was, there was no one, not anyone, who seemed the least inclined to raise even so much as an eyebrow that I could see, so who knows.

Oklahoma City Airport was quaint, but progressive. I stared at the toilet seats trying to figure out how the cellophane-like coating on the seats traveled around to sanitize itself. Really. You put your hand over a sensor and this plastic seat coating spins around on so that fresh stuff comes out and covers it. I felt like I had to take a Toilet Seat Covering 101 class to figure it out, but it was definitely a cool feature.

Taking off and landing were interesting, as I felt like all the blood was rushing out of my head. And we taxied so long before leaving BWI on the way out that I wondered if we'd somehow taken off and were in the air. Wrong.

Coming back into Bal'more, we had a slow descending landing. It was awesome! We circled the airport and could see the traffic and the lovely leaves on the trees. The sun was lowering in the sky so everything had a beautiful orange hue. It was magnificent! I'd like to go on record as saying that I truly enjoyed it.

Imagine that, me saying that I enjoyed flying. Whoda' thunk?

You may email Cubby at cubcmtysun310@yahoo.com.