Thursday, November 16, 2006

As I left the beautiful blue skies of South Florida yesterday, my plane made a smooth path to Tampa where I had a four hour (!) layover.

I spent those hours reading, eating, and visiting with others who were unfortunate enough to be stuck in the airport awaiting connecting flights.

Conversation centered around the severe storms that were moving into the Southeast. I, unfortunately, already knew that this turbulent weather system was heading straight for Birmingham. I had spoken with some of the girlies back home by now and knew that our area was under a tornado watch for most of the day.

My nervous laughter couldn't hide the fact that I was concerned about what lie ahead. I kept myself calm by saying that the pilots were smart people and they wouldn't fly into anything that they couldn't handle, right?

Of course, some of my old fears were trying to play with my mind as I sat waiting for my flight to leave.

About an hour out of Birmingham the pilot got on the intercom and had the flight attendants take their seats and told us to buckle up as we prepared to head into this massive storm system.

We "rocked and rolled" quite a bit as we faced the oncoming winds....but it wasn't anything that I couldn't handle.

As we came through the dark clouds on our approach to Birmingham, the plane made a smooth landing and I let out a huge sigh of relief.

I really felt fine and realized that I had truly conquered my past fear of flying. A smile came over me as I thought about flying to St. Louis next Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving with some of my family....

Of course, I AM hopeful that Tuesday will be a nice sunny day..... : )

4 comments:

Moobear said...

I am so glad that you are safely home. I hate you had that turbelance, that always scares me. Hope you get rested up before your other trip next week.
You are a busy lady. Take care friend.

L. said...

Thanks Moo...I feel as though I am out of town more than in lately!!

I hope that you are feeling well...

Gattina said...

Oh my rocking and rolling ! Usually I don't fear any flight but once we came back from Chicago to Brussels and there were 3 thunderstorms over Chicago !!! The huge airplane with 300 seats shaked like a happy dogtail ! The hand luggage fell off and on the floor and even the stuarts looked green I can tell you that I would never ever forget ! Happy that you are safely home ! What about the announced tornado ?
Please don't answer (if you intend I mean) here, because I never come back when I commented on one post. I write this because I see you answered Moo. Do it in my comments then I get an email anyway.
I see you decorated your sidebar a little more ! Looks nice !

Gattina said...

I like the weatherpixie because it gives an idea of the temperature where we live and in the morning I can always tell my husband it's such and such degree outside (first time he said "how do you know ?" So it's quite cold at your place 39 ! Here it's unusually warm.