Back up high

I managed to have a relatively uneventful flight. Relatively, for me, means "I was not stuck in Cincinnati for five hours, and I arrived at my destination when I was supposed to."

There was an aborted landing going into Chicago. One of those times where, okay, we're descending, things on the ground are now houses and cars and whatnot rather than indistinguishable specks, going lower, oh my we're going up rather alarmingly fast, why might that be? Apparently there was a problem with the runway or we were supposed to use a different one or something, and a few minutes later we landed without problem (a bit abruptly, but word on the street has it that Midway has very short runways). But to someone who's rather nervous flying to begin with, the "going down, going down, all's normal, oh god not normal" is really scary.

And this is the second time in about a year that it's happened to me.

My father, who's flown probably ten flights for every one I've been on, doesn't think he's ever been on a flight that aborted a landing. My mother has never experienced it. Twice now in a year for me. *sigh*

I also met a very nice Southwest ticket agent in Philadelphia, because stupid me forgot to remove my pocketknife from my purse before going through security. If it were anything else I'd have just handed it over, but this particular knife was inherited from my grandfather when I was about six, so it has significant sentimental value. But the Very Nice Woman actually went back, found one of my checked bags, and put it in there for me. So for once, I got a positive story from flying.

And after having hauled three big, bulky suitcases all the way up to my dorm, I'm once again left wondering who the hell builds a city at such a high altitude? Yes it's beautiful, but you know what? There's no oxygen here.