Flight to Egypt
I was thinking the other day (Oh dear Lord no! Take shelter before these thoughts take shape!) about air travel. I feel that air travel is the safest but yet most feared form of travel. Many people who would not think twice about taking a car someplace, even though over a million people are injured in drunk driving accidents alone in the U.S. per year, are not willing to board a plane which only crash maybe three or four times a year.
I love to fly but on my last trip I realized something. When I am in my car, the most unsafe form of transportation, I never think of something going wrong. In an airplane, I always think of something going wrong but yet I am still content flying. Heck, my plane hit an air pocket while landing in Omaha, Nebraska., dropped 20-30 feet, and I left unshaken. Either I am suicidal or I trust the airlines.
The superb security at the airports is one reason why air travel is safe. After being brought back through the metal detector, removing change, my cell phone, keys, and detonator, I was still detained for a little while. I was told by the security guard to "spread" and he waved a wand over me. Every time the wand beeped he would frisk me in the area responding to make sure I had nothing that could cause harm to the passengers. Little did he know I had my own unique personality that strikes fear in children, causes the old to flee, and the women to fall in deep, deep love with me at the sound of my voice. No one is safe.
The airport is no place for joking, in fact they have signs saying so: SECURITY IS NO JOKE. If you happen to joke that you have a gun, explosive, or surface to air missile, they have permission to do everything in their power to make sure you are safe by searching everything from your luggage to your body and then detaining you and your flight. They sit you in a hot room with a bright lamp and interrogate you. Hours later you are allowed onto your flight which has been detained for hours causing the passengers to become irate. They now have full right to make your flight a living Hades by doing whatever it is they want to do such as nuggies, shoving bamboo shoots under your finger nails, and even tickle torture.
Of course my company is too cheap to fly me first class. But then I guess I need to belong to a real company that actually pays me money. Lately I'm more of a self-employed man myself. Even though I have only flown coach, I know there is a difference between that and first class. The first class passengers sit in front of the little curtain, coach sits behind the curtain never knowing what really happens in the front portion of the plane. My theory is legalized gambling, loose women, and little marriage by the minute chapels. That is correct, first class is nothing more than the Las Vegas strip. What sin lies in front of that curtain? Do I dare think of it? Would they be "saved" if the plane crashed? They should be ashamed of themselves! But then it is only a theory, which, like my JFK assassination theory that fingers [REDACTED] [REDACTED] as the gunman on the grassy knoll, the government might silence me on. My company might too if I had one.
One of the luxuries of flying is the fact that you do not have to drive for long periods of time. Driving is a waste of time because you cannot do anything while you drive. Flying on the other hand, you can do creative things such as knit while you travel. Trust me, knitting and driving do not mix. One problem with flying is the short flights I take such as Omaha to Chicago or Omaha to St. Paul. These are only 50-minute flights and don't allow enough time to knit yourself an afghan. All I can do is small, little doilies, and as a man, well, I don't have to tell you how weird I feel knitting doilies. What I need is a three-hour flight to Washington, D.C., but whenever I fly there, I am usually playing cards with the president on Air Force One, which by the way is really classy.
Okay, so I've never been on Air Force One, but I've seen the movie. I have flown many times on planes and after being shot from a cannon (my early circus days as Chadwick VonKluck, German Cannon Ball) and even after the Flying Fritz and Han Trapeze Show incident, I still think flying is the best. Face it, when I travel to Egypt, I'm flying, not driving.
In 1997, there were 2 alcohol-related traffic deaths per hour, 45 per clay, and 315 per week. That is the equivalent of 2 jetliners crashing week after week. (NHTSA, 1997)