Travel Firsts

I'm back in the city, after an uneventful flight from Knoxville. I almost expected something to happen, the way there were several firsts on the trip there:

1. The first time I really misjudged how long it would take to get into Manhattan at 2 a.m. (Note to self: it isn't a half hour; it's more like an hour and a half at that time of the morning.

2. The first time SuperShuttle was ridiculously early. My scheduled pickup time was 2:30 to 2:45 a.m.; in the past, they've usually run to the late end of that range. But I got the "Your driver will be there in 15 minutes" reminder call at 1:45! I was still in Astoria at that point (See #1 above).

3. The first time I had to depend on the kindness of a stranger to get where I was going (See "Holiday Heartwarmer" entry). Without that cab driver overlooking my lack of a tip, I would have been dropped off just inside Manhattan and missed my shuttle ride.

4. The first time we had a landing problem not due to weather. I've arrived at Newark in the winter before when storms below forced us to circle the airport with some 20 other planes in a holding pattern, then land somewhere in Pennsylvania to refuel, then go back to circling before coming in for a very rough landing. (Come to think of it, I believe that wild trip might have been last Christmas.) But this time we were approaching the Knoxville airport in clear conditions with little wind-- no problem, right? Well, the landing gear was out and we were about 100 feet or so off the ground when our pilot suddenly pulls up to circle the airport one more time. As he told us, the control tower had just told him we'd be cutting it too close by coming in for a landing at that moment: imminent collision with another plane at the end of the runway! This kind of stuff happens at Newark, or JFK, or LAX, or another major airport with a lot of traffic, not my little regional airport in Knoxville!

With the unexpected problems cropping up on the flight there, I was definitely expecting something to go wrong on this flight, but it couldn't have been smoother. I slept the whole way, even through landing-- another first! We even got in early, which doesn't happen often in New York!