Travel time

I used to be a terrible traveller.  The thought of crowds at the airport, stinky little seats in packed planes, using a bathroom that is a prototype for a design to infect someone, these were not favorite pastimes.

Honestly, the old, retired, broke, shuddering, lowest possible cost airplanes the military subjected me to are mostly to blame.  When you have to walk out of the terminal and across the concrete, because the airline that you have never heard of, doesn't have gate privileges, it makes you think.  When you think about the plane, in terms of whether it ferried Eisenhower and Patton,it leaves you a bit concerned.

I guess, the fatalism that I now have, to face air travel is also from the military.  There is just not anything to do about it, one way or the other, once you board the plane.  You are the one that decided to do that, so it is your decision that puts you there.  Does not help to think about it ahead of time.

Now, I just do it.  I don't like it, and never will.  But, it is what it is.  I don't worry about what will be, that is all in God's hands.  I worry more about what it will feel like.  Nothing about flying bothers me, except for the landing.  If you bite it on takeoff, or during flight, it is catastrophic, and you will never know.  Falling 5 miles or more out of the sky before paying the piper for the gravity ride, that has to suck.

Long as we stay in the air, we are good.  Let me explain to you how terrifying that makes bad turbulence to me.  I rode dirt bikes and most every kind of vehicle you can imagine as a kid.  I have a very good sense of motion and directional change, as my body feels it.  Dropping a 1000 feet is a singular kind of feeling.  You recognize it immediately.  The turbulence goblin follows me around.

But, a few years back, I gave up driving everywhere.  I don't have the patience or the time for it anymore.  I still enjoy driving, if we are not bound by time.  But, I will put up with putting myself entirely in the hands of a person I have never met, and never will meet, for the convvenience.

Truth be told, airplanes are extremely safe, much safer than driving on I40 here in Raleigh, or living in Fayetteville.  I get overly concerned for no good reason.  Xanax helps, but still doesn't make me like it.  I just take comfort that it is not an eight hour transatlantic flight.  For those, I make the doctor give me Ambien.  The stewardesses don't know it, but they are deeply indebted to that doctor.

It is worth it today.  I would walk if I had to.  I am just grateful that we are blessed with the ability to go and try to help our dear friends.  I don't have good words, I don't have any magic potion.  I just know that we need to see them, we need to tell them in person we love them, and we need to hear that  back from them.

All of yall take care, and be safe.  We will see how the weekend goes.  GLYASDI.