I swiped the picture here since I was in such awe, I didn’t even take a picture. My complete peace was quickly replaced by a terror that I hope to never experience again. We were circling around the airport, made apparent by the gentle tilt of the wings for an extended period of time, oh about 20 minutes. The pilot finally gets on the intercom and announces, “Folks, you may have noticed we have been circling the airport. There is a dangerous amount of wind, so the air traffic controller wants to give each aircraft plenty of room to land in case of emergency. We shall be on the ground shortly.” Translation: I am scared to death but I want to convey to everyone that I am a competent pilot.
It was now time to grip something. Anything. Max and I did not hold hands.
I would like to say I had my life flashing before my eyes, that I was grateful for having lived my dream to travel overseas. But honestly there wasn’t time. As the pilot made his approach, lowering closer to the ground, I could feel the plane shudder and shake. There was a jolt this way and that. The three foot grasses that flank the runways were sideways. The wind was making pretty ripples in the grass, but the wind sock was waving maniacally, violently. I both wanted to close my eyes tight and stare out the window. Staring out the window won out. When the plane was about 20 feet off the ground, it pitched hard to the right. The wing looked like it was going to make contact, and then it leveled, and we shot back up into the air about 50 feet. I will never know whether the pilot brought the plane up or were the ferocious winds playing with the plane, rendering it a flimsy paper model? By this point everyone was gasping for air, cussing, and yes, even laughing. Max was next to me laughing. It didn’t seem like the nervous but belly-nonetheless-laughing of the older gentleman behind us. I could have sworn Max said, “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” The wife of the man behind us said, “It’s not funny!” Just as I emphatically exclaimed as if in unison to Max, “it’s not funny!” The plane dipped down and shot up a few more times, and then suddenly we hit the ground and all we made it safely. But every passenger on that plane let out a huge audible sigh of relief, among a chorus of the most favorite of four letter words.
I guess subconsciously we did not want to get back on a plane after such a questionable landing, so we meandered through the Tokyo airport for awhile. This is the best airport I have ever seen. Not only is it well-stocked with impossible-to-get-in-the-States Japanese toys, but it has pay by the hour sleeping rooms, smoking rooms with automatic doors, and being Japan, it is clean! We really could have used all of these amenities in Newark where we had the displeasure of being caged into the terminal. Not that I smoke much, but after super stressful situations, a drag or two is nice after you think you will lose your life—ironically. The entire terminal had become a desolate ghost town when I heard “Mr. Max Miller and Miss Sarah Dubel, would you please come to gate 43.” To hear your name on a PA system is a bit unsettling but then to hear it repeated over and over like a mantra is even more so. We took off toward our gate and did not have to push people out of the way since we were the only ones there. Even though the sun was still up, the airport was deserted, which was quite weird. We got there and the rest of the plane was politely waiting for us, and had to wait even longer so that Max’s bag could be “randomly” searched. I am certain that we became suspicious terrorists because of our late board. This woman did everything short of unstitching Max’s wallet to see what he could have hidden under the leather.
I sort of wish we had missed the plane, because if our landing into Narita had been a problem, the flight over the Pacific became what I swore was the ride of a life. We weren’t looking forward to our eleven hour trip, but were committed to it nonetheless. I was amazed that we all did not lose our lunch, urrr dinner. It was soon into the flight, and it was sudden. As suddenly as an earthquake strikes, came the constant shudder of violent turbulence….for hours. The flight crew had to suspend the dinner service because it was too dangerous to continue. During the distribution of meals and drinks, they kept instinctively crouching down as the plane shook and shimmied. Our guy said, “Shit!” I asked, “Aren’t you used to this?” and he said, “It hasn’t been this bad in awhile.” The pilot suspended the service so as not to risk any broken necks and it is a good thing he did, because the plane suddenly went into a deep freefall and it was amazing to see the synchronization of the passengers holding up their drinks as their liquid tossed into the air. It looked like party tricks, as if everyone decided on the count of three that they were going to flip their drink out of the cups and catch it again, as a chef does when pan flipping.
Things started to get serious and I had a good dose of PTSD from the ’89 Loma Prieta quake. More than twenty years later, I found myself hiding in Max’s shirt like a child….for a long time as people looked on with sympathy. Embarrassing, yes. But everything about turbulence suggests an earthquake. The walls of the plane shake as the walls of a building. It becomes loud, deafeningly so. It leaves you wondering if it will all be ok, and you don’t know when it will stop. And the causes are not exactly tangible. Airstreams? Shifting tectonic plates? I can’t see them, so they are all the scarier.
