10,000 Miles Milestone

Besides snakes, there was nothing that scared me more than flying.  I realize now that it was a completely irrational fear as driving is so much more dangerous, but no matter what I told myself, I just couldn't seem to get past it.  I think that it started when I was on a flight alone in my late teens and we encountered an extreme amount of turbulence.  I was sure that we were going to drop out of the sky.  It didn't help that a large passenger flight mysteriously exploded in 1996 killing all 230 passengers on board.  Thus, for ten years, our family really didn't fly much of anywhere.  Doug would still travel for work, but that was it.  If we wanted to take a family vacation, we drove.  It made more sense anyhow, as costs for flights for a family of six were astronomical at the time.  

At some point while I was teaching at Milford, I decided that I couldn't live my life without flying.  Our family was missing out on a lot of fun by always driving.  Southwest had become extremely popular with tourist and prices for flights became a lot more reasonable.  I didn't even think about being scared and booked flights for a short trip to Disney World for our family.  I happened to be seeing someone for anxiety at the time.  She wasn't quite sure about my "rip the bandaid off" approach to getting over my fear of flying, but she did have some tips for me that really helped.  I made it through that first flight and so many trips since then.  I am so glad that I did.  We would have had a hard time traveling to all of the places that we did while Meg and Cameron were in high school if I hadn't and we definitely would not have moved to Florida.  

The other reason that I am glad that we started flying again was that I showed my children that there was nothing to be afraid of about being in the air.  They have taken many solo trips since we started flying again, and Cal even made it to Ireland without any issues.  The best part about it is that I didn't scare Meg out of marrying a pilot.  Yes, she worries about Nick when he's traveling, but no more than anyone would if their fiance was on a trip for work.  Even his near death experience with the loss of cabin pressure last May didn't change her mind about the relationship.  I even handled it way better than I would have thought, although I did send him a list of jobs that were deemed safer in my mind after the incident.  Thankfully, Nick ignored my "advice" and continued to fly.  This week he hit a huge milestone in the world of pilots.  He officially flew his 1,000th hour on his latest trip opening up a host of job opportunities for himself in the near future.  Meg surprised him with a special cake and Doug and I applauded from afar.  We are all excited to see what he choses to do next.