The Goodrums

The airline adventures continue...

At work, we are quickly coming up on our annual conference in Washington, D.C. (June 3-6) and there's a lot to do. So last week I went to the "real office" to help with some of the preparation.

On Friday morning, a series of strong storms rolled through Houston but they all cleared out by mid-morning. Friday noon, I went to lunch with some of my former coworkers (so fun!) and then headed to the airport for my 3:50 pm flight. I showed up to learn that my return flight to Jackson had been cancelled due to "weather." Note that by now it was bright and sunny with not a cloud in the sky. Love it!

Thankfully, Continental was good (like usual) and rescheduled me back to Jackson later that evening. Their remaining flight for the evening was full so they rebooked me on Northwest through Memphis. Of course, the rescheduling meant that I would get into Jackson at 8:10 instead of 5:20, which messed up my evening plans (missing Aggie Muster, stink!) but at least I was getting home.

So all was well and good until mid-way through the flight from Houston to Memphis. Evidently the pilots didn't notice that there were some huge thunderheads in front of us. Talk about turbulance! I fly a lot - and I'm not afraid of flying at all... In all that experience, though, I've never experienced turbulance like this! We banked and pitched and then all of the sudden we dropped several hundred feet through the air. The plane completely bottomed out and went into a free fall. The nice little beverage service cups hit the ceiling - literally - as did the bag of trash that the flight attendant was carrying through the aisle. I was very thankful to be wearing my seatbelt. I think that's the only time I have actually ever truly needed my seatbelt on a flight. I went slightly airborne out of my seat and pulled up against the seatbelt. Wild!

The guy sitting next to me and I felt really bad for the guy sitting across the aisle. He was in the bathroom when that happened! We couldn't help but laugh a little. How awful is that! Airplane bathrooms are bad enough without turbulance!!

I did eventually make it home and was very glad to be safely on the ground in Jackson. I made the tail end of the Aggie Muster event - where they nominated me to be chair of next year's Central MS Muster in my absence. Perciate! :) Michael and I started dating 5 years ago on April 21 (Muster) so that was a fun little milestone to "celebrate." Wow time flies (and hopefully the other kind of flying will be a little more uneventful in the next few months - because there's a lot of it scheduled!).