prog: (Default)
Today's itinerary has us flying an ickle plane from Columbus to Milwaukee (yes, not quite the right direction), and then a nice big jet for three hours back to Boston.

I'm both amused and frustrated that these four plane fights seem like three progressively more difficult challenges for an aviophobe, with the plane shrinking in size (and therefore more prone to turbulence) each time, followed by a boss battle where I get to ride a larger plane again but the total flight time is about the same as the previous three flights added together. There's even a sense of nemesis with the very last bit, since my two previous landings at windy, peninsular BOS were memorably scary (albeit on board smaller planes). And then I'll be home, and maybe leveled up...?

Not boarding for another five hours or so. I've eaten breakfast and had my one allowed coffee (which might be putting me at my chemical-nervousness peak right now). Time to take one more walk around suburban Dublin.
prog: (Default)
Landed in Columbus last night, via Philadelphia. Early critical reviews suggest I did a very good job as an air passenger, significantly exceeding all expectations based on past performance.

See my Twitter feed from yesterday for the blow-by-blow, plus some postmortem commentary. Somehow the flight on the smaller jet between PHL and CMH was honestly one of the smoothest plane trips I've ever had, maybe the smoothest on a sub-747 airplane. We flew in a straight line over the gently snowing clouds for a full hour, surrounded by a pitch black sky and more stars than I've seen since I was in college. (And it reminded me how much I'd like to do some proper stargazing again, sometime.)

Things I did differently, between yesterday's flights and previous ones:

* Used LJ and Twitter as I did. A stylish pilot-wings pin from me to all who sent along their good thoughts; you all helped me tremendously.

• Read (several weeks ago) Captain Stacey Chance's online multimedia essays for aviophobes preparing to fly. Despite its Web 0.9 layout, its frequent dips into inspirational-poster corniness, and its conclusion in a pitch for books and CDs by the good captain, it contains what was for me a small wealth of great advice. I found that, when things got juddery on the plane and I started getting nervous, thinking on these lessons calmed me down immediately.

My favorite single takeaway from "Capt. Stacey" is that, to an airplane moving at typical speed, the air rushing past "feels" like a much thicker fluid that it usually does to us groundlings. In the past, I'd try to think of the plane like a great ship on the sea, but now I had a much better metaphor: it was like a submarine! It wasn't skimming atop the medium that always threatened to swallow and destroy it; it was part of it, surrendered to it utterly, and therefore its master. Such an elegant and beautiful image.

So when the plane passed through turbulence and my hindbrain said Ugh! Plane shaking! Wind trying to kill us! Flee!, I would picture this image. The new perspective really took the edge off of the fear.

• Consumed no coffee -- or anything else caffeinated -- beyond my wake-up cup. A lesser challenge than usual, because my body was too distracted by the stress of travel to cry out for its afternoon dosage.

(And I allowed myself two and a half glasses of wine at the dinner party, but my flight-nervousness is so sobering that it's hard to tell whether it had any effect. Definitely didn't hurt, though.)

• Used the NOAA's live turbulence charts to see what we could expect to fly through. This was on [livejournal.com profile] mr_choronzon's advice, and it really did help. It added a little bit of dread to see some orange-colored moderate turbulence in our flight path, but this ended up being a fair price to pay for losing the surprise and confusion of encountering it unexpectedly.

• Sat beside [livejournal.com profile] classicaljunkie the whole time. Yes, I did this last year as well, but this year we had reason to mutually support each other: on the first leg she was really stressed out by all the children on board, something that doesn't perturb me so much. Worst was the toddler who tried to relieve his holiday hyperactivity by bashing at her seat-back with his shiny new Tonka truck while singing his very own Christmas song into her ear. Poor Amy! So it was nice to be able to lend her some support right back. (The kid situation was awful enough to move the leggings-and-Uggs-clad teenager sitting on Amy's other side to join us in hushed commiseration.)

• When we banked, I could pull up my iPhone's compass and watch as our heading changed and then restabilized. Where my hindbrain could before cry Ugh! Plane is drooping out of sky! Flee!, I could now wash the whole system with undeniable visual evidence that this was happening for a good reason. And by god this helped shut the damned caveman up.

• I learned a new mantra from a TED Talk that Ze Frank gave recently. (The particular story, and eventually the song, begins at 14:20.) I have used mantras on planes since I first became afraid of flying, and they have evolved from genuine prayers to God for safety to repetitions of songs I like. I found this one effective because of the story of community behind it -- I really am a sap for stories like this -- and it tied in thematically with how I leaned on y'all for support, too.

While I can't say I'm looking forward to the flight back -- I haven't regained my long-lost ability to read while in-flight yet, for example -- I'm not in bring-me-my-brown-pants mode about it either.
prog: (Default)
Passing the time at Logan, with Amy. For whatever reason, this trip has been preceded by the worst case of aviophobic freakout I've ever experienced. It's been something like a single mid-intensity panic attack, stretched over three days. I can try speculating why this is, but it wouldn't help. I've been talking about it with Amy and that's helped a little. Trying not to get into any magical-thinking modes about this.

The fact that my Xmas eve was entirely plunged into dread and fear was especially rough; reading all the seasons' greetings from my friends across the internet made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Today's better by virtue of having a really swell early Xmas dinner with a few dear friends; that really chased a lot of the shadows away, even if my appetite didn't really suit the occassion. But then we called the taxi and I'm all rather knotted up again.

Gonna throw some tweets out there as we complete legs of this trip. All I want for Xmas is the knowledge that my friends are thinking of me while I work through this. It really is very difficult for me, to the point where I'm likely to seek professional help, later.

Best and sincere wishes from your friend in the skies for a happy Christmas evening...
prog: (Default)
Even though I'm not planning a trip any time soon my subconscious has been laboring to make me feel better about air travel. I don't know why this is... it's just been occurring to me lately that it might be nice to fly somewhere, and I won't freak out about it this time. Sounds like a plot device, doesn't it? Except that the VALIS wasn't programmed very well because I don't have any destination in mind so it's not like I'm actually doing anything about it.

I dreamed last night that [livejournal.com profile] classicaljunkie and I were waiting somewhere for something, and I entertained her by mimicking an airline pilot's intercom drawl about how we were in a holding pattern folks but we'd be comin' in pretty soon and here are some facts about the temperature and time down there, and it sure does look like a lovely day.
prog: (Default)
I had two dreams this morning.

First was a good dream. I was simply a passenger on a big jet, and enjoyed a few flights. All were smooth and relaxing, despite my nervousness about such things. Towards the end of the dream the pilot got fancy and performed backwards and even sideways take-offs and in all cases the experience was like riding a vast, flawless glass ramp into the sky.

Then I dreamed that I was home and Dick Cheney (who, for some reason, had a syrupy Southern accent) called me on the phone to gloat about how I had failed to detect his scheme and he was now free to carry on. I had no idea what he was talking about, but felt terrible about it, sure that if he was taking the trouble to call me then I must have been tasked with the mission to stop Dick Cheney and simply missed the memo. I asked him what he would do now, and he chuckled and said that I didn't need to know.

Apparently what tipped him off was that he had, from afar, noticed me reading some false Wikipedia pages that he had planted to entrap and confuse his pursuers. These were two pages on webcomics that my dreaming self had, in fact looked up prior to the phone call. The pages were bizarre: one looked as if someone had simply moved the discussion page onto the content page, and the other featured only a bland publicity photograph of a senatorial-looking black woman and some text about her, as well as a simple map of U.S. with the larger states labeled in blue MS Comic Sans. Through traffic analysis Cheney saw me spend time wondering at those pages, and then move on to something else; from this, he concluded that I was on his trail, but then got thrown off, just as he had intended.

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