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2004-04-02 11:43 p.m.

So, okay. I don�t like flying. That�s no big secret. Needless to say, my flight back home from Barrie was no funastic time for me. The take off was turbulent, and, for some reason, the pilots always turn the plane while we�re taking off, about a million feet in the air with another million to go up. Honestly, I say wait. Wait until you�re at your cruising altitude and then turn. Seems like less can go wrong that way. Sometimes I�m lucky and the plane takes off in the right direction. This time, no. Turning while going up. Just wrong.

Anyway, after that, it was bumpy and icky. I always get dizzy on the flight and feel like the plane is spinning. Since I�m the only passenger with a look of terror on my face, I figure we�re probably okay and it�s just me. I always check the flight attendants. If their smile says �I hate you all, here take your freaking pretzels� then all is okay. If the smile says �We�re all gonna die, I can�t believe my last minutes of life will be spent with you jerks� then I know we�re in trouble. I�ve never seen the second one, and hope I never do. Anyway, back to my long story. No one else looked like they thought the plane was spinning out of control, so I put my Discman on and tried to not worry.

Finally, we started the decent into Thunder Bay (which was ten whole degrees warmer than Toronto and sunny!). We�re a few hundred feet above ground. I�m able to name off some of the streets and such. In about one minute we�d be on the ground. Suddenly, the plane starts grinding and we�re going back up. This has never happened before. I thought maybe we needed to straighten out a bit, but we kept on going up. Soon the city was way below us, and we�re turning left, turning right (while going up, which as you know give me the heebie-jeebies anyway). So, I thought either the runway in Thunder Bay has broken into little tiny pieces, we�re going to Winnipeg, or the pilot�s lost it and we�re all going to die. I decided not to panic and looked at cute pictures of my new niece. I figured if I�m going to die, looking at her sweet face would be a nice last thing to see.

At long last, we level out. About five minutes after we pulled up, the pilot decided to let us in on the situation (believe you me, I think he should have come on when we first started back up). Apparently the plane�s instruments read a dangerous wind speed closer to the ground and they didn�t feel it was safe. Now, I�m glad that the did what they thought was the safest, but tell me. So, we had to turn around and land with the wind.

Long story short: I was scared and have no idea who I plan on getting to Ireland in October.




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