It’s going to take some time for me to get my bearings back. They’ve rolled off, and are maybe behind the stove, behind the refrigerator, or under the sink. I don’t have a clue as to where to begin looking.

I lost my bearings last night, after becoming quite anxious (again) about flying. I am not like the geese – I can’t fly. And I have never, ever considered air travel to be the safest way to go.

Airplanes are very heavy. That they get off the ground amazes me. That they land on the ground further amazes me. Landing, I am told, is the most dangerous aspect of air travel. Of course. You have

all kinds of options going up into the air. You have few options when you land. If you don’t make it onto the tarmac, you are a cooked goose.

The odd thing is, landing doesn’t seem as dangerous as it is because you have the take off and all those air miles behind you. You can, you think, handle going down through the clouds and bumping along because the end is in sight.

There it is – air travel according to Alys. This is the simple version. I wonder if there is a book, entitled Air Travel for Dummies. I should see about writing this. I could learn all kinds of things and maybe in this way deal with my high level of anxiety.

Today’s flights – the first was from Portland to Seattle. This took 35 minutes. The second was from Seattle to Anchorage. This took 3 hours and 30 or so minutes. El dropped me off at the airport really early. There was a long wait for that first flight. The first flight was bumpy because it was a small plane.

The second flight, it was all wrong. Pete, who made my reservation, did not get me a window seat. I was assigned a middle seat, that is one between two people. I got to the assigned seat first, sat in the window seat and then, when the woman appeared who had that seat was asked if I could have it, I was told “no.” I was to be wedged between her and her friend, but fortunately, her more kindly travelling partner said that I could have the aisle seat. This was not great, but it was far better than being in the middle seat.

The pilot said that the flight would “have some bumps,” and halfway through, oh yes it did. I yelped once, it was quite a jounce.

The one saving grace was that El had made me lunch. I didn’t know that I was hungry until I ate the rice and beans. I hadn’t even (up until then) thought about the fact I might get hungry.

I had feared that the landing might be aborted because of an oncoming storm. As it turned out, the storm had passed at the point in time that we landed. It seemed to me to be an eternity, that time before getting off that plane. But it came to be, and no one, absolutely no one, was happier than I was about this.

Next: 313. 11/14/23: Back in the Saddle Again