Slappy, I believe I've done my share of flying around this world of ours, but I've never had anything like you describe. The closest call I ever had was when I was on a audit in Las Vegas back in the sixties, and on take-off the plane blew a tire. The pilot didn't make a quick decision, so we ended up close to the end of the air strip close to the fence. They put all they had into the brakes, and the wheels were smoking real bad. As soon as we stopped, we were told to remove our shoes and jump out on the slides. Nobody was injured, and we were put on another flight home.
c.i
babs, Please post the link to <Raven's Realm>. I can't seem to find any freeby photoshare websites out there. c.i.
The thing that really irked me wasn't only the fact the plane was shaking because it was dropping so fast, but the flight attendants looked like they sh!t themselves. That's not a good sign, when they look nervous too.
I was on a flight once that went through a flock of geese at about 12,000 feet, heading out of Minneapolis. I was sitting right next to the engine when BLAM! The back of the plane almost instantly smelled like Thanksgiving. I looked out at a softball sized dent on the engine's intake cowling.
I tried to get the attention of the flamingly gay flight attendant but at first he just sat there, I think scared. He finally got the co-pilot to come back and take a look, and when he did he was as white as a ghost. Apparently another one had hit the window right in front of him. They turned the plane around and we wound up on another flight. That's an expensive engine overhaul.
Another time a plane lost a generator on one engine, and FAA rules said you had to land immediately. We were over Denver, so that's where we landed. On final, the pilot mistakenly lines up on the L instead of the R runway, and at about 300 feet in the air, suddenly makes this maneuver, to the right. Thought for sure that was the end.
The last thing that happened was on a 747 flying back to San Francisco, as we came out of cruise over the Sierra Nevada, just as they pulled the throttles back one of the engines siezed. Quite a sound, and the flight attendants immediately started running around like crazy, trying to clean up the plane, as we got the emergency landing treatment (cut about 20 minutes off the flight). Nothing happened, but scary at the time.
Slappy, Have you noticed if those flight attendants now wear brown uniforms? ha, ha,....
roger, Thanks for the link.
c.i.
cjh, I thought I did a lot of flying, but you beat me by two close calls.
c.i.
ci, my Dad was a private pilot so I have literally hundreds of right seat hours in a variety of aircraft, but oddly, we almost never had any problems. All my close calls came on commercial flights.
Our son got a private pilot's license before he got a driver's license at age 16. He took me up only once for all the time and expense.
We flew out and in from San Jose International Airport on a Cessna. I took alot of pics, and still have them in my album. c.i.
I took a train from Chicago to NYCity, via Pullman once. THe trip took about 10 hours. The bad part of the trip was the 5 hours we spent in a corn field outside the campus of Notre Dame.
More bad later!
Babs, Just returned from 17 days in Peru and Ecuador. I've posted some pictures on the Ravens Realm site in the past, and more than likely do so again, because my 'old' photo-share site started charging $$$.
c.i.
We can post small photos here....big ones take up too much room. Come to think of it, it might not be a good idea right now during the transmission period to a new server, but usually it is ok to do. The how to is listed under Forum Help, or Babs might be able to tell us how she posted here. (I've managed to post my dog as my avatar but not gotten around to doing pictures in the posts.)
Still, for more than one picture, Raven's Realm is a good idea.
I am looking eventually for a site where I can post a lot of pictures...I suppose I have to do my own website, a task that is daunting to me. I would like to put the best of my italy photos on a site...I don't mean ten, I mean hundreds.
Well, first I will store them in an organized form on a cd, then I'll worry about a site. Maybe I will pay attention to the site Algis has used, Webshots...
My first post early in this thread was a little, uh, phobic about company on trips. I didn't mean it to sound quite so extreme. I have had wonderful trips with one other person. My husband and I always travelled well together, and
had good and great times even through stressful occurrences. But...I was stuck on a longish trip once with a real whiner as a travel companion and that was quite a lesson. Plus I have been on some short but excruciatingly unpleasant tours, the day trip kind, making me really wary about longer ones. And, as I said, I like a level of control when I get to travel so rarely.
As I get older though, I can see where going with a like minded group could be interesting, especially if money weren't an object, as it is for me. I like small, charming, but not expensive hotels, quiet little restaurants with good food..lots of walking in cities. I like museums, but I love seeing art in its original context. Well, there I go, sort of an individualistic sense of itinerary.
Algis, Crete sounds wonderful, and the tour you describe is the kind I might really enjoy.
And, re airplane difficulty..there was the Aeronaves flight from Guadalajara to Tijuana..back in the late sixties. The stewardess, as they called them then, was using her rosary, and when the plane did land and coast to a stop, and steps let down to let people out of the metal can, the man out the door in front of me - a stallwart fellow in a black suit - knelt down and kissed the tarmac.
