A high-flying adventure

I don't know whose brilliant idea it first was, or why I agreed to it. But it sounded fun at the time, and indeed the only way to do Mackinac Island in one day. Basically, the plan was this: Since it takes about 4-5 hours to drive there from lower Michigan, four of us would pile into a plane so small it could be transported on horseback, of our own free will and being (presumably) of sound mind, and allow it to carry us, through bumpy skies and possible rain, 275 miles north and dump us in Lake Huron. Actually, they said the plane would land on the island, but I had my doubts.

I can only think it must have been peer pressure that made me agree to this. Funny how a situation like that takes you back to middle school. "C'mon, everyone else is doing it!" Not, I wish to add hastily, that I ever yielded to such pressure back then. Of course not. It is only as I got older that my will began to weaken.

I had a lot of questions about this excursion, the foremost being how to file a will in the quickest way possible before we left. I also asked how far away from me the person next to me in the plane would be, in case I had to grab their arm during the flight. Not in case, but when, I amended. I am notorious for causing black-and-blue marks on fellow air passengers' persons. Joe and I almost opted for a bicycle trip for our honeymoon for this very reason. (Although then it would have been my person, or at least the back end of my person, getting black and blue.)

I had had some vague notion that the plane would be like those small ones you see on TV. On TV, small planes are always very luxurious, because they are carrying the president or someone pretending to be the president while the real president is tied up in the back somewhere, being asked whether he wants peanuts or a Rice Krispie bar. These planes have seats made by La-Z-Boy, with plenty of room between the seats to get up and walk around, or to fight with someone when they try to untie the real president in the back.

When I first saw our plane I said to the pilot, "Will both my legs fit in there, or do I need to keep one back?"

"Ha ha!" he laughed, then turned accusingly to my brother. "I thought you said they'd all flown before."

"They have," he answered. "Just not in this small of a plane."

The pilot rolled his eyes and dug out what looked to be several pills of ibuprofen from his pocket, although they might have been something stronger. I thought he was going to offer them to me, but he downed them quickly before getting in the plane.

The plane was what my father would call a puddle-jumper. I had never really understood that term before, but I did now: I seriously doubted whether this contraption could jump over a puddle, let alone stay airborne with 800 pounds of human cargo for over an hour.

The whole thing reminded me of the time my sister and I were in Hawaii (you don't even want to hear about that plane ride) and she got the bright idea to go snuba diving. This is a recreational sport designed to terrify little sisters, who don't dare say no because they have said no to every other "fun" adventure proposed during the trip, which big sisters can only tolerate for so long. Snuba diving is a cross between snorkeling, which looks safe enough even for me, and scuba diving, which no sane person would ever agree to do. I actually thought it sounded fun, and the brochures showed all these smiling, bronzed people -- supposedly tourists -- happily cavorting among friendly, colorful fish and coral. No mention, of course, was made of sharks in the brochure. And so off we went to snuba dive, and when we got to the water's edge I thought, who was I kidding? I don't even like to put my face in the water. There is no way I am putting that mask and tank on and submerging my entire body in the water, down there with who knows what kind of life forms.

But that story is another blog. Anyway, I felt just like that when I saw this toy plane I was supposed to trust to carry me the length of the entire state and land on a little dot of land surrounded by large, deep bodies of water. Who was I kidding.

The pilot wanted Joe to ride up front with him, and I suspect that Joe slipped him a little incentive for this so he wouldn't have to sit next to me and subject his arm to my death grip. My brother and sister flipped a coin to see who would have to take his place. Come to think of it, they flipped several coins. Meanwhile, I climbed into the plane and strapped myself down with every conceivable strap I could find, just in case. My sister climbed in next to me with a defeated look on her face. My victim. My brother sat across from me, carefully keeping his limbs out of harm's way.

I started to get out my earplugs, which I always wear when flying, but my brother told me to put them away. "We have to wear headphones because of the noise," he said. Great. Not only would I be terrified, but my ears would ache the whole way, too.

One upside of the headphones was that the three of us in the back could talk to each other easily (Me: "What was that noise?" Siblings: "What noise?" Me: "The one that sounded like the engine quit!"). The pilot and Joe would tune in to us occasionally, too, for instance, to tell us we had taken a wrong turn and would have to land in Greenland to refuel, but for the most part they turned us off their frequency so they didn't have to listen to my constant questions about whether we were going to crash. Besides, they had to pay close attention to air traffic control for instructions: "You are heading straight into a tornado. You must immediately go into a nosedive to have any chance of saving yourselves!"

In spite of all this, I was remarkably calm through most of the flight, largely due to the pilot's wise decision to wait until we landed to tell us that we had had to detour around a large storm system that would have swallowed our plane whole. The scenery, when I got brave enough to open one eye, was beautiful, although on the whole I prefer to view the landscape at eye level. I did experience some nervousness when the pilot flew in close to the Mackinac Bridge, which joins the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan (what other state has non-touching parts, other than Hawaii, and that's an island) for Joe to get a picture, and we had to keep flying around and around so he could get different angles. I got to know that bridge pretty well. I can even tell you how many bolts and screws are in that bridge (enough to bolt the upper peninsula directly to the lower peninsula, thereby eliminating the need for a bridge in the first place).

Plane landings are always tricky. When the plane in which I am a passenger is landing, I try not to think about the fact that landings are one of the most dangerous parts of flying. I prefer to think the most dangerous part is unbuckling your seat belt before the pilot has turned off the "fasten seat belts" sign. Flight attendants always warn against this, so stringently that you get the feeling it is the scariest thing you could do on a plane. But I cannot control landings, other than to turn my body in the direction the plane is turning, as if to help it achieve optimal position, and pray furiously for the plane to make contact with the ground rather than with the trees, nearby buildings, stray deer, etc.

I do not know how close we came, or did not come, to being hung up in any trees along the runway. My eyes were squeezed shut.

I had all day to forget that I had to do this all over again at the end of the day, and I decided the best way to forget was to consume large amounts of ice cream and fudge. It must have worked, because I feel asleep on the way home, contentedly oblivious to whatever may have been happening in the 5,000 feet between me and solid ground.