Another excellent adventure

A fellow I've known for a long time told me not long ago to stay away from writing about my trips and expeditions because people don't care about them. He thought I should only write about substantive topics that stimulate thought, discussion, and conversation. On the other hand, other people tell me they look forward to reading about my journeys, either for vicarious reasons or to see what foibles I experienced because something bad usually happens when I venture outside of McCook.

I'm going with the second opinion instead of the first so if you don't like my travel stories, this would be a good column to skip.

My son, Michael, is getting married in July and I had to go to Arkansas to get fitted for my tux so I drove to Denver International Airport last Friday to catch a plane to Tulsa where he was to pick me up and drive me on to Russellville where he lives. I had decided earlier to attend a couple of concerts while I was there so I was really looking forward to the journey. I decided to fly instead of drive because I didn't relish an 11-hour drive by myself, even with an iPod crammed with 14 hours of music.

I flew United Express out of Denver and was surprised to learn that we were on the maiden voyage of a brand-new airplane that had just arrived from the manufacturer in Canada. In relating this story to friends, some of them have asked me what kind of plane it was and I have no idea. I didn't care anymore about who made the plane I was flying on or what kind of plane it was than I care about what kind of locomotive pulls the Amtrak train I occasionally ride. Flying is a means to an end for me, not the end itself.

Anyway, the plane was completely full and, in fact, the gate attendants were offering a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the continental United States to anyone willing to give up their seat and take a later flight. Michael was driving over from Arkansas to pick me up so that option was not possible for me. I soon wished it had of been.

After boarding and taxiing down to the runway, we waited in line for our turn to take off and, once in position, the captain put the pedal to the metal, so to speak, and we hurtled down the runway on our way to take-off speed. Suddenly and without warning, the engines shut down and the brakes were applied hard, scaring the crap out of everybody on board. The plane slowed quickly and the captain turned off the main runway and headed back the way we came. The head flight attendant came on the PA system to tell us that they were just as surprised as we were and he was sure the captain would be making an announcement shortly about what had happened which he did. We were told that the brand new plane's state-of-the-art computer system had stopped working just before take-off speed was reached and the only option was to abort the take-off. He also announced that the computer was back on line and we were going to try it again. A girl sitting in the seat in front of me looked to her traveling companion and said, "You've got to be kidding me." We taxied back to the head of the runway and attempted taking off a second time. You could have heard a pin drop in the cabin of the plane because no one was saying anything but this time the take-off was uneventful and we soared into the blue Colorado sky and headed for Oklahoma.

The man sitting next to me told me he was a private pilot and had had to abort take-offs before when he was piloting his own plane but this was the first time he had ever experienced an aborted take-off on a commercial airliner. We reached our cruising altitude of 37,000 feet and I was admiring the scenery of the landscape some seven miles below when I was shocked out of my socks to see a jet off our right wing zooming by in the opposite direction. It was close enough to us that I could see people in the plane. I loudly yelled an expletive and the guy next to me asked me what was wrong. I told him what I had just seen and asked him if he saw it too and he said he didn't. He also said the other plane couldn't have been that close because of the rules of separation that govern flying are designed to ensure that things like that don't happen. I asked the people in front and in back of me if they had seen the plane and no one had but I knew what I had seen was real and there was no way the two planes were outside the rules of separation. The rest of the flight was uneventful but I assure you I was glad to get my feet back on the ground.

This had all happened within the first six hours of a six day journey and it was only the beginning. I'll report the rest of the story next week.