Three air flights but only two horror stories

United Airbus & bum front wheel
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

ITHACA, New York - The day started out badly when the cab that was supposed to show up to take me to the Ithaca Airport was 15 minutes late and I only had a one-hour cushion at best to catch a 5:30 a.m. flight. Still, I got there in time, only had a few surly ticket counter people to contend with and got aboard a propjet to fly to Philadelphia.

The flight attendant, however, made up for the benign experience in the terminal by telling me I couldn't use my IPod while we were flying.

No kidding. No IPods, no computers.

And lest you think it was my ponytail, she told the same thing to other folks on the 25-seat aircraft who likewise wanted some tunes for the ride to Philly in the dark.

Why she cared, I'm not sure, because as soon as we were airborne, she curled up on the front two seats and promptly fell asleep until our wheels touched down.

Asleep, as in out cold, as in practically snoring. (If she did snore, you would never have been able to hear it over the roar of the engines anyway.)

Did I report her to the airlines? Nah. I figured one of these early morning runs, the plane will land with a giant thump and down she will go off the seat and into the bulkhead - a tough one to explain to the main office.

In Philadelphia, the counter folks were bored, not rude, and we loaded onto one of the big United Airlines Airbus carriers. It was almost as comfortable as my flight to France several years ago on a British Airways jet.

But the loveliness of that airbus experience was shattered two hours later when I climbed onto a small United Airbus - like the one in the photo - for the last run from Chicago to Sacramento.

Sardines in a can are more comfortable, but what-the-hell, it's only a four-hour flight, right?

Wrong in this case.

We left gate right on time and taxied out onto the runway apron, then abruptly taxied to an area well away from the terminal, prompting more than a few people to wonder if there was some threat - or if the police would show up, sirens blaring, to haul someone off.

Finally the pilot came on - after about 15 minutes - saying we were going back to the terminal to check out a grinding noise from the front wheels of the plane.

A grinding noise!

And, like every car I have ever owned, when we got back to the terminal and two very bored United mechanics came out to take a look, well, there was no noise to be heard, even as they rocked the plane and banged with what sounded like claw hammers.

"The mechanics think everything is fine, so we'll taxi out again and see what happens," the captain announced an hour later.

See what happens?

What happened that time was we made two huge circuits around the Chicago's O'Hare airport, testing the brakes and the front wheels, which were apparently quiet.

And so nearly two hours after we were supposed to take off, we did, roaring off into the sky, my seatmates already complaining of serious leg cramps and as cranky as children who have been in a playpen too long.

Mercifully enough, the flight attendants on the flight didn't have any problem with people using IPods or computers and so I rocked across the country, listening to some music I intend to put in the next Fox-Fitzgerald rockumentary: Kate & Steve, a Hectored Romance.

Almost exactly four hours later, the smoggy skyline of Sacramento heaved into view as we made our approach, my seatmates reminding me that the reason we were late (and I was going to miss my first class of the afternoon) was because of a grinding noise in the front wheels.

A grinding noise.

And so as we dropped down, the north winds buffeting us from side to side, I noticed that the flight attendants were buckled in very tight in their little seats, exhibiting none of the cavalier behavior most attendants do when their plane lands.

We landed with a decided thump, but no terrible screeching noise or sudden lurches were evident. And it was at that moment that I remembered that the United Airlines mechanics were forced to take a wage cut in their last contract negotations, a fact I was glad I had forgotten when we were in Chicago listening to them bang on things like they worked for Jiffy Lube. (Nothing like a pay cut to make people responsible for things like maintenance want to do a really good job.)

Still, I'm comforted to be home safe - and the earliest air flight in my future is probably Christmas when it would be nice to get out Sacramento's fog and to the warmth of Mexico.

But given what's happening to fuel prices, even that trip is probably in jeopardy.

The great Hobie disaster & summer's over

Hobie Cat up and over
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

VALOIS, New York - The very last time I went downhill snow skiing in California, I decided that after a whole day of hitting the slopes to take one last run down the intermediate slope.

One last run.

That last run ended with me head-first in a huge snowbank well off the course, with just my skis and ankles showing, my sunglasses mangled. The ski patrol girls were very kind and pulled me out and got me down the hill.

I wore a back brace for, oh, about a month after that adventure.

So yesterday, when I shoved my borrowed Hobie Cat off the beach and out into 10 knots of wind, I knew it was the last run of the season, but I wanted just one last run.

One last run.

The wind, which had been brisk, as sailors say, got very brisk in only a few minutes and the mainsail, always a sticky darned thing, would not go all the way up the mast no matter how hard I tugged. And while I tugged, the Hobie was racing downlake like a rocket, away from dock where Admiral Fox was going to come down to, carrying the beer and drinks and cooler for the one last run of the sailing season.

One last run.

I didn't flip the Hobie, though when I was forced to gybe the boat in about 20 knots of wind, I went up on one pontoon and probably looked a little like the photo with today's entry. Then I sailed straight for the nearest shore - two miles away - and ran that Hobie Cat up on the beach like a Jamaican surfer.

After about a half-hour of trying to figure out how-the-hell I was going to get the boat turned around, the sail up and back up the lake to my dock, (where the Admiral was waiting), I was reminded of why I married a 'lake girl.'

While I sat with waves washing over the Hobie, I spotted a red aluminum skiff making its way towards me, bouncing high in the waves and sending spray up 10 feet.

A rescue boat! And it was Admiral Fox, who had pushed our 16-foot tin can off the shore, cranked the 18-HP Evinrude and came down to help when I didn't come back. She also had seen me racing towards the shore and the sudden stop at the beach.

The rescue effort, like all rescue efforts, wasn't simple though, and the Admiral ended up towing me back to the dock, sails removed, a long, sloppy, wet affair. And today I'm sporting bandaids all over my fingers from the blisters and enough black and blue marks on my legs to look like I was playing field hockey, sans shin guards.

But, by God, I got that one last run.

And although I swear today I learned my lesson about pushing the limits, I can't swear that next summer I won't do same thing.

But no downhill skiing this winter, for sure. My twisted knee (from doing the Twist July 3) will keep me off the slopes, I'm sure.

At least I think so today.

Selling healthy food at schools not enough

Scale tells the story
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The state's lawmakers are all aghast at the latest state report on child obesity that says - gasp - kids are ballooning up even more than they were just a few years ago.

The San Francisco Chronicle carried a good story this morning that details it out.

Our kids are GROWING

So, why do lawmakers care if the kids are carrying around extra pounds? It's the potential health care costs down the road. If they're 20 pounds overweight at 12 years old, you can bet they will be closer to 40 pounds at 24. That all translates into diabetes and heart trouble and knee problems and, and, and...

As is noted lightly in the story, selling kids bottles of Evian and giving them celery sticks at school for snacks will hardly fix anything. Just as we found with teaching honesty and ethics, schools are a tiny sliver of what kids see and deal with. Parents - and probably TV and other media - are a helluva lot more important.

But the battle of bulge for kids, I think, has a lot more to do with the sedentary lifestyles that the parents and kids are comfortable with. Most public schools have cut out rigorous physical education. And beyond that, when children come home from school, they are unlikely to go grab a basketball and shoot a few hoops, or zoom around on their bicycles (though certainly some do).

No, they are more likely to plop in front of the television - or computer - while they wait for mom and dad to come home with the extra-large-jumbo-cheese-pepperoni pizza for dinner and the free gallon of soda that comes with every double order of bread sticks.

Even if the parents understand the need for the kids to, well, just run around, the constant drumbeat about how unsafe the world is just outside that door is hardly an incentive to doing what my mother did - boot us out the door (even in the snowstorm) to go play.

The California Legislature can spin around and talk about the evils of Coca-Cola and Pizza Hut for the next 10 legislative sessions. But until MTV makes celery sticks seem sexy and parents trade soccer balls for the latest version of Grand Theft Auto, the pounds will probably just keep on packing on.

In the meantime, pass the breadsticks, will you?

Going hi-tech with a radio for the boat

Boat radio
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

VALOIS, New York - I almost tossed out an old AM-FM radio with a box of stuff destined for the Salvation Army. There's tons of such prized possessions in the house, the collection of a lifetime of my mother-in-law.

But I rescued the radio, when I realized that you don't need an fancy stereo sometimes, just tunes.

And it reminded me that I had a radio quite similar when I was tooling around Lake Chautauqua in my ski boat 40 years ago.

Forty years... Could that be true?

We were at the mercy of the local DJs in those days. Whatever they chose to play (or were paid to play, remember payola?) we listened to, thought was cool and went careening down the lake with the radio turned up as loud as could be.

Our outboard engines were loud and we blew out more than one radio speaker.

I haven't figured out yet how to strap the little radio onto the Hobie Cat for what is likely to be the last sailing adventure of this season. But given that the radio was destined to be given away, we won't be risking all that much if it get a splash of water. A bigger trick will be finding an all-oldies station among the forest of country music that seems to be the most popular around here in the hills of upstate.

I'll bet my new amigos out on the lake two days ago - the May-September couple - could have used just such a radio to smooth their waters.