Sundance Film Festival - 01/19/06
Got invited to work for a week at the Sundance Film Festival. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and never having been to "Sundance," as those in the know call it, I asked my boss for the week off and boarded a plane for Utah.
The adventure begins barely after leaving California. Flying Southwest Airlines, I had to change planes in Las Vegas. The trip from LA to "Vegas," as those in the know call it, is usually the most uneventful flight you can book. You take off; the serve you a drink; you land. That's really all there is to it.
But not this time.
As we're coming into land at McCarren, we had some slight turbulence, but nothing that worried me. It wasn't until we were just about to land that things changed. At that point where you've just gotten over the runway and you can see ground coming up to you, you usually feel the nose of the plane kick up and you set down gently. Rear wheels first followed by the nose wheel.
Well, as we were at those final few feet of descent, probably the last several hundred feet, it looked and felt like the plane was going down faster than it was moving forward. It was a very flat drop and only at the very last moment did the nose pull up a little. I felt the wheels, or perhaps just the right rear wheels touch down, but things still felt a little off.
At this point, I turned from my window and looked inside the cabin and realized that we were actually tilted to the right. Before the rest of the wheels touched down I felt the engines power up and we took off before even really setting down.
At this point the cabin was abuzz with lots of "heys" and "whoas" and "what the fucking fuck?" The latter being what was going through my mind. I've heard about the touch-and-go landing before, but never experienced it. The closest thing I've been through was a take-off where the pilot aborted before leaving the ground. What I realized pretty quickly was one of two things: Either the pilot fucked up the landing or some serious wind fucked up the pilot's landing.
It turns out the latter was true. The pilot came on the p.a. a little while later, too much later if you ask me, and said that they had gotten a wind shear warning as they were coming in and decided to abort. I guess I should count myself lucky. Wind shear has put enough planes into the ground that I appreciate the fact that we landed in one piece, even if it took two tries. Upon completion of the successful landing, there was applause from the passengers. I just wanted to get off the plane and scoop the poop out of my shorts.
* * *
Next up: Destination Park City, Utah.
The adventure begins barely after leaving California. Flying Southwest Airlines, I had to change planes in Las Vegas. The trip from LA to "Vegas," as those in the know call it, is usually the most uneventful flight you can book. You take off; the serve you a drink; you land. That's really all there is to it.
But not this time.
As we're coming into land at McCarren, we had some slight turbulence, but nothing that worried me. It wasn't until we were just about to land that things changed. At that point where you've just gotten over the runway and you can see ground coming up to you, you usually feel the nose of the plane kick up and you set down gently. Rear wheels first followed by the nose wheel.
Well, as we were at those final few feet of descent, probably the last several hundred feet, it looked and felt like the plane was going down faster than it was moving forward. It was a very flat drop and only at the very last moment did the nose pull up a little. I felt the wheels, or perhaps just the right rear wheels touch down, but things still felt a little off.
At this point, I turned from my window and looked inside the cabin and realized that we were actually tilted to the right. Before the rest of the wheels touched down I felt the engines power up and we took off before even really setting down.
At this point the cabin was abuzz with lots of "heys" and "whoas" and "what the fucking fuck?" The latter being what was going through my mind. I've heard about the touch-and-go landing before, but never experienced it. The closest thing I've been through was a take-off where the pilot aborted before leaving the ground. What I realized pretty quickly was one of two things: Either the pilot fucked up the landing or some serious wind fucked up the pilot's landing.
It turns out the latter was true. The pilot came on the p.a. a little while later, too much later if you ask me, and said that they had gotten a wind shear warning as they were coming in and decided to abort. I guess I should count myself lucky. Wind shear has put enough planes into the ground that I appreciate the fact that we landed in one piece, even if it took two tries. Upon completion of the successful landing, there was applause from the passengers. I just wanted to get off the plane and scoop the poop out of my shorts.
Next up: Destination Park City, Utah.
scribbled by Rob at 3:27 PM - permalink
1 Comments:
Reading that story has caused me to have to scoop poop out of my shorts.
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