Flying

Flying

This weekend I flew back to England to spend Christmas with my family. It’s a trip I’ve made quite a lot in the last few years. The flight between the two countries is so short that I suspect the airplane takes a run and jump towards England rather then actually flying through the sky.

This might also explain why the music from Back to the Future always pops into my head as the plane speeds down the run way like Marty McFly in the time traveling Delorean. However, I am fairly sure that a plane has to be going faster then 88mph to take off and there is little danger of it traveling through time when it does so. If it did a wide range of new holiday options would suddenly become available.

I have only experience bad turbulence once in all the years I have been flying (a fact that I am not too upset about). It was during a flight in the winter. The plane was constantly shaking and dropping a few meters. Every time it happened everything within the plane seemed to stay suspended in the air for a second before realizing they too should be affected by gravity (I believe this is called the Wily E. Coyote theory of course and affect).

A lot of people were starting to get worried, including myself. There were cries of panic, a near by child threw up; all that was missing was Scotty from Star Trek screaming, “She canna’ take much more captain!”

Things were looking very bad. Then I noticed something that almost made me laugh. At the front of the plane there was a group of English tourists returning from a weekend in Amsterdam. Every time the plane dropped in one of its stomach churning losses of control they threw their arms into the air and cheered as if they were riding a roller coaster. Suddenly the situation was no longer scary and a short while later we landed safely.

If comedy can make a situation like that seem alright then maybe airlines should think about having a trained comedian onboard and replacing the oxygen masks with Helium.

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

26 Responses

  1. tenakalaz says:

    I think the best comment ever made by Bill Bailey was on never mind the buzzcocks.

    When he did an impression of Michael Winner ordering in a restaurant….

    “I will have the owl served up in it’s own tears”

    Jamie oliver eat your heart out :) (no please Jamie do)

  2. BlondebutBright says:

    I’ve been on so many planes the past few weeks that my stomach churns just from hearing that story. I can sympathize!

    Have a great time and I’ll look forward to your stories in the new year.

  3. TC says:

    Just cmae back on a flight from Mongolia over the Urals and that was an experience!! even the crew looked worried and that’s saying something for an Aeroflot crew! Needless say everyone clapped when we landed, but apparently they do that all the time :-)

  4. vallyP says:

    Hmmm, I’ve had that experience just once in Africa, in what we called a flying sausage, but I can’t remember the name of the plane. We spent the whole flight plummeting into the depths of the air troughs at various intervals. Anyhow, there is nothing about one’s stomach concertina-ing into one’s back teeth that I could ever find even remotely funny…helium or no!

    Happy Christmas Stu. Don’t get too drunk at new year though. You can’t write about hangovers again ;-)

  5. Miss Evvil says:

    Hi Stu!
    I didn’t know that you had aaffected the statistics this much with your accident prone life-style ;)

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6203423.stm

    Have a great time on vacation and bring back more of those hilarious stories of yours :D

  6. Invader_Stu says:

    Matt – That’s the Bill Bailey bit I was thinking of

    Tenakalaz – That one makes me laugh everytime too

    TC – That sounds scary

    BlondebutBright – I’m just happy that I did not have to fly in the crazy fog we have at the moment.

    Miss Evvil – They wrote a news story about me. Cool :p

  7. vallyP says:

    Just to wish you a very happy Christmas and New year, Stu. come back soon or we’ll miss you far too much!

  8. Bonestorm says:

    Members of the Barmy Army by any chance? Those guys seem to manage a laugh no matter what the situation.

  9. Invader_Stu says:

    vallyP – Thank you. Marry Christmas to you and everyone as well. You don’t have to worry about me going any where. As soon as I get some time I have a very funny story to tell.#

    Bonestorm – I think they would have still been doing it if we ended up floating in the sea.

  10. Bibi says:

    Merry Xmas, I’m sorry I’m late. Got stuck in a not quite as short trippie from Pluto. It seems like Britain is far until you go to other planets.

    Bibi

  11. Donna Bobonna says:

    I just discovered your blog after returning to Los Angeles from Amsterdam. This was an absolutely hilarious entry!

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