As Promised
As promised, my last plane post.
I went home again to Montana for the Christmas after the nosedive incident. This time, the airport in Helena, MT was accepting flights from Northwest. I guess our little capital had finally grown large enough. As it turns out, they had completely revamped the small airport. Truly a sad, sad loss.
I grew up going to the airport late in my footed PJs with my mom and little brother to see my dad off on business trips. He didn't go too often, but it was a special thing when he did. We got to stay up late, and see the plane take off (no security in the old days). The little airport had all of three gates, two downstairs to walk out onto the tarmac, and one upstairs for the planes that were big enough to utilize the tunnel walkway.
The entire place was splashed in that orange '70s decorators reveled in. A two seater plane hung precariously from the rafters painted in black and orange sporting a dusty, and lopsided mannequin pilot. Heads from animals covered the walls. Dear, elk, antelope, mountain sheep, jackalopes, buffalo, and a moose. Some had their entire body displayed on a stick or a small piece of rock like the mountain goats, bear, rabbits, badgers and coyotes.
Oh, it was lovely. There was a dark bar lined with casino machines and filled with smoke. The airport entertained children with a packman video game and an old candy machine. Now you can buy espresso there, and all the dead animals are gone. I miss the old one.
Anyway, so as I was saying, I flew direct from Memphis to Minneapolis to Helena. An uneventful flight except we couldn't land in Helena. It was too foggy. So, we circle for about 45 min, then the pilot announces we have to go to another airport before we run out of gas, great. So we land in Great Falls (about 90 miles northeast of Helena). Then they can't get us off the plane because their walkway thing isn't tall enough, or was too tall, whatever, we couldn't deplane. So 30 minutes later they find a ladder for us and we get off. Then, we all wait in the terminal for another 30 minutes for a bus to take us to Helena.
We get on the bus, make it about halfway before the bus begins swerving and almost goes off the icy road. Oh no, it wasn't the road, it was the driver. He couldn't see because the defrost had stopped working. So we wait on the side of the road for another bus. When we arrived in Helena it was 2 in the morning.
The next Christmas I went to Paris.
I went home again to Montana for the Christmas after the nosedive incident. This time, the airport in Helena, MT was accepting flights from Northwest. I guess our little capital had finally grown large enough. As it turns out, they had completely revamped the small airport. Truly a sad, sad loss.
I grew up going to the airport late in my footed PJs with my mom and little brother to see my dad off on business trips. He didn't go too often, but it was a special thing when he did. We got to stay up late, and see the plane take off (no security in the old days). The little airport had all of three gates, two downstairs to walk out onto the tarmac, and one upstairs for the planes that were big enough to utilize the tunnel walkway.
The entire place was splashed in that orange '70s decorators reveled in. A two seater plane hung precariously from the rafters painted in black and orange sporting a dusty, and lopsided mannequin pilot. Heads from animals covered the walls. Dear, elk, antelope, mountain sheep, jackalopes, buffalo, and a moose. Some had their entire body displayed on a stick or a small piece of rock like the mountain goats, bear, rabbits, badgers and coyotes.
Oh, it was lovely. There was a dark bar lined with casino machines and filled with smoke. The airport entertained children with a packman video game and an old candy machine. Now you can buy espresso there, and all the dead animals are gone. I miss the old one.
Anyway, so as I was saying, I flew direct from Memphis to Minneapolis to Helena. An uneventful flight except we couldn't land in Helena. It was too foggy. So, we circle for about 45 min, then the pilot announces we have to go to another airport before we run out of gas, great. So we land in Great Falls (about 90 miles northeast of Helena). Then they can't get us off the plane because their walkway thing isn't tall enough, or was too tall, whatever, we couldn't deplane. So 30 minutes later they find a ladder for us and we get off. Then, we all wait in the terminal for another 30 minutes for a bus to take us to Helena.
We get on the bus, make it about halfway before the bus begins swerving and almost goes off the icy road. Oh no, it wasn't the road, it was the driver. He couldn't see because the defrost had stopped working. So we wait on the side of the road for another bus. When we arrived in Helena it was 2 in the morning.
The next Christmas I went to Paris.
posted by ldbug at Thursday, September 21, 2006
9 Comments:
I can't believe that you still travel after all of those experiences. I am afraid of heights, so I don't know if I would have even been able to get off of the plane.
How was the flight to Paris?
yeah, how was that flight?!?
yeah have you ever had a good flight! must remember never to get on the same flight as you!
Are you bad luck or what?
That airport sounds delish, great description, sad I'll never get to see it.
Yikes! The Travel Gods were surely arrayed against you!
flying with you would be fun! pass the novocaine
OH, the flight to Paris was kinda hell too, mostly because we left after an ice storm in Memphis and missed all our flights. I was able to get us on the last flight out of the country for the next week, but we made it!! And lost luggage, but compensated with a looooot of great wine:-)
I'm so glad I read this AFTER I had flown back from my holiday!
Well, no snow & ice in Italy now, so no worries flying there! The airports are bigger too:-)
Hope you had fun!
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