Home again

There is much to tell about Bouchercon, and I am in the process of preparing a post for the Killer Year which I hope to have done later today. Honestly I'm not sure I can even remember it all.

But there is one thing I remember. The flight.

Okay, so the delay on the tarmac in Portland was annoying, but not life-threatening. If that had been the worst thing that happened, I'd have been a happy boy. We pulled away from the gate and then sat there for about an hour. But the captain was something of a wag, and that helped. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, they're saying the delay out of Chicago is weather-related, but the report is partly-cloudy skies and winds at 12 to 15 knots, so it's obviously not the weather. Perhaps the donuts were late arriving to the O'Hare tower today..."

Ha ha. Donuts.

Then there was the woman across the aisle from me whose husband has missed the flight because he got stuck in security. She didn't understand, if we had this delay, why we couldn't roll back to the gate and get him. That struck me as a reasonable thought, though of course the gate most likely had another plane coming in. I mean, it's not like a parking space at Safeway. Still. We had time, so it was worth asking, I suppose.

It came out that the reason he got stuck in security is because he'd already gone through security, decided not to go on the trip, left, changed him mind again, had his ticket re-instated, and then tried to come back through security a second time. At first I was feeling sympathetic, because if he was like me, maybe he was fighting airplane terror. But, no. He and his wife had argued and he'd stomped off in a snit. Oh well, buddy. Fly out tomorrow. And hope you enjoy your cavity search.

Finally we took off, and I succeeded in not screaming or anything. Actually it was pretty mellow. A little bumpy toward the end, but I had my iPod and a novel to read. I couldn't concentrate to write, but no matter. As we came in for the landing in Chicago I felt rather sanguine about the experience.

I used to fly to Chicago often. The company I worked for had a client there, and I was out that way often. The approach was familiar enough. In fact, the client's offices were right next to the airport and as we came down, I caught a glimpse of the building. Nostalgia! Then over a road, low enough by now that I could just about read the license plates on the car. Ten more seconds to touch down. Ahhhh.

Except instead we pulled up abruptly and veered right, and I could feel my cheeks flapping like an astronaut's in a centrifuge. Or James Bond, maybe. (Remember the one where Roger Moore got stuck in the centrifuge and had to be rescued by some buxom...wait, I'm drifting here.) No one came to my rescue, alas. To my left was a young girl, maybe 16 or so, and aside from the g-force facial distortion, she seemed relaxed enough. To my right sat an older woman who'd been reading a book about Jesus the whole trip. I think it took all she had to keep from screaming. I'd have thought she'd be a bit calmer, but oh well.

The good news is we lived! After a bit Captain Wag came on and said, "Well, sorry about that, folks. The tower asked us to perform a missed approach due to a minor mix-up on the runway assignments." Minor, ah. Okay. Good to hear.

We landed about ten minutes later, which seemed a good time to detach my fingernails from the arm rests. Out in the terminal, I heard some guys in officially-looking uniforms talking about the "near miss" out on the runway. Apparently, as we were landing, another plane was taking off. Coming right at us. Though from their perspective I suppose you'd say we were coming right at them. Either/or.

Minor. Yes.

Next time, I'm taking the train.