Part 2 in the Continuing Saga..The Question Answered

Dorothy again. The International Man of Intrigue, perhaps feeling guilty after reading my highly worried e-mail, Skyped with me this morning. He said, "I didn't crash. If I did, I wouldn't have been able to e-mail you from my hotel." I said, "Try telling that to Tall Twist and my other friends from the international copy machine corporation I used to work for." He said, "I thought the airline called that a "botched landing" or something?" I said, "Well, I can't remember the details, but I'm pretty sure the lawsuit made the airline call it a crash." Then he sent me this:

 

So there I was, cruising at 37000 feet and minding my own business when this Sri Lanka Airbus 300 decided it wanted to land. Why? I don’t know. In the sky there were only random pockets of turbulence and a vague memory of scary takeoff-associated noises. Why did we have to spoil the moment with adding the possibility of becoming a flaming 300 mile per hour lawn dart? Why did we have to mess anymore with the laws of gravity? Couldn’t we just fly up here until technology caught up to Star Trek and we could beam ourselves directly to the baggage claim? Apparently, loitering is frowned upon for adolescents and airplanes with finite amounts of fuel.

The plane’s moans and groans increased as we lost elevation. Suddenly, I thought back to Mr. Stewart’s 7^th grade algebra class: This plane is like a mathematics equation, and what happens on one side of the equals sign has to happen on the other side of the equals sign. If we go down, noise has to go up. Does that make sense? I could almost see the pilot fighting to control the aircraft while the co-pilot solved for “X”. I crossed my fingers and hoped he had paid attention in class and not had to write, “I will not talk in Mr. Stewart's mathematics class without permission” as many times as I did. Wow, life could be ending and I could think only of Mrs. Johnson’s geometrical advice from 1992: “Everyone says you don’t need math after high school, but you will.”

The plane bounced, squealed, and moaned as we committed ourselves to the final approach. Why did it have to be a “final” approach? I’ve seen “Top Gun” and “Air Force One” enough to believe we might have a couple of shots at this if the first attempt to get on the ground doesn’t look so good. But Final? Yes, Ghostrider, the pattern is indeed full.

I gripped the arm rest tighter than screw in a nut house.

Thoughts: Should I look out the window? Do I even want to look? I’ve never liked surprises, but maybe I should let this landing be a surprise? Am I wearing flame resistant materials? Is this shirt a cotton blend or all synthetic? Why am I the only one about to lose it?

I pulled my eyes off the window and looked around the cabin. A few rows ahead of me sat a Westerner. I remember seeing him when we boarded, and I thought he looked familiar. Not, “Hey we went to school together” familiar, but more like, “He’s on TV” familiar. *note. To the surprise of every taxi driver I have ever had in India, all Westerners do NOT know each other. But I thought I did know this guy. His hair was short and white, but he wasn’t much older than 40. He was dressed like he fell out of a GQ mazazine. And, he hadn’t looked up from his iPad since I spotted him. OMG! Could it be CNN correspondent and media darling Anderson Cooper? No. Of course it wasn’t Anderson Cooper. Anderson Cooper was probably in business class receiving his “we’re about to die in a huge fire ball” complimentary chocolates and souvenir gift bag. All I had was a lousy Sri Lankan Air refresher towelette packet in my shirt pocket and a boarding pass that said 33K (AKA, not far enough back to be in survivor seating!) Could that be Anderson Cooper? I couldn’t quite see.

My vision of Mr. Maybe Anderson Cooper was partially obstructed by a large closed circuit TV monitor hanging above the center aisle. By a what? Holy crap, I think we were supposed to be able to watch the plane land from a nose-mounted camera, but the left-right-up-down bounce of the monitor made focusing on the picture a little difficult. Be it the CCTV or the window, I was going to watch this thing unfold whether I wanted to or not.

Then it happened. The wheels touched down for a millisecond, bounced off the ground, and set down again. Actually, I was relieved to know the landing gear was still there. The plane surged down the runway and struggled to reduce its speed. It felt as though the pilot was downshifting instead of using his breaks. Wow, this guys is good, I thought. Only a pro can engine break. It lengthens the life of your brakes and is also more fuel efficient. Wait a second, planes don’t have transmissions! Again, WTH?!

We lurched and chugged to the terminal. I expected people to clap, cheer, and celebrate our near death experience. It turned out they only wanted to turn on their smart phones and check email. Even Mr. Maybe Anderson Cooper didn’t seem to care.

The remainder of my journey was uneventful…until this morning. Almost exactly 12 hours later I was the first guest to hit the breakfast buffet, and it was nothing short of AMAZING. I lifted each lid to find the best breakfast spread I’ve ever seen. Fresh squeezed OJ. Made to order omelets in which the choices were only the ingredients I enjoy in my omelets. Pancakes, waffles, Frosted Flakes. Potato salad with little bits of bacon. LITTLE BITS OF BACON IN THE POTATO SALAD FOR BREAKFAST! For a guy that isn’t normally excited about food, I was in heaven!

Then, a 6^th Sense: Maybe that plane didn’t land. Maybe Haley Joe Bob will need the assistance of an Army Foreign Area Officer, but it will turn out that I am the one that really needs his help. Maybe that was my final approach, and this is the afterlife. Well, I guess it could be worse. The wifi is ok and there’s a gym. This will do.

Wait, where are the donuts? Heaven has to have donuts! If this isn’t heaven, then… AGH!!!

The devil’s greatest feat was convincing man he did not exist…and creating a hell void of donuts.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Back in May, my wonderful and beautiful super-smart engineer friend who we'll call Hedy Lamarr came to visit. As the first visitor to the Intrigue home in Sri Lanka, she won a rather fabulous prize: the opportunity to guest blog. I really wasn't sure Hedy Lamarr was going to accept it. The prize didn't come with an expiration date, happily, so when I found this in my inbox this morning, I was excited to share it with you. Oh, and no matter what she says, she's qualified to write. I made a couple of very minor corrections before posting this. I told you she was smart. Also, growing up, she and I had a series of English teachers who were very serious about their craft.

Warning: The following blog post was written by an engineer. Given the choice between classes where one wrote papers and classes where one solved difficult math problems, I always chose latter. Aside from my ability to correctly use the words their, there, and they’re, I’m not really qualified to write a blog. So when Dorothy asked me to guest blog, I laughed. Then I realized that she was serious and being the good friend that I am, I decided to give it a shot…

When I learned that the Intrigue family was moving to Sri Lanka, my first thought was, “Cool, I should go visit!” My second thought was, “Where exactly is Sri Lanka?” After consulting my trusty Google map, I was able to confirm that it is very, very far from Houston, TX. It is also relatively close to Singapore where another friend of mine is currently residing. A little coordination, and I had a trip to Sri Lanka and Singapore planned. A couple months and a few vaccinations later and I was on my way.

About 23 hours and a quick stop in Moscow after leaving Houston, my plane landed in Singapore. It was 6 am on Saturday morning. Since my flight to Colombo wasn’t until 17 hours later, I had made arrangements to hang out with my friend in Singapore for the day.

It was a busy day which thankfully started with a shower (24 hours on a plane and you really, really, appreciate a nice shower), and included cable cars, Merlions, shopping malls, a short nap, casinos, and of course, food. I did get stranded in a subway station when my friend jumped on a train before I could follow. Luckily he’s a good friend and came back for me.

Later that night it was on to Sri Lanka.

Day 1 started off according to schedule with some GoNuts donuts. (Did I mention that The International Man of Intrigue provided me with an hour by hour color coded schedule for my visit? I’m glad someone did some advanced planning because I sure didn’t!). They do know how to make some good donuts in Sri Lanka. A great start to my visit! Then on to the National Museum where I learned important things like Sri Lankan history and the proper proportions for a sitting Buddha. Later that day Dorothy, Amelia and I got to take a tuk-tuk to the Gangaramaya temple. Everyone should get to take a tuk-tuk at least once.

Day 2 in Sri Lanka started off with some shopping (I believe this was the “chick shopping stuff” part of the scheduled activities) and included a little fashion show for Amelia and Gertrude. They didn’t like anything I tried on that wasn’t pink. I bought the yellow skirt anyway. It’s cute when 3 and 5 year olds dress themselves, maybe not so cute when they dress you.

The next couple of days were a mini vacation in Bentota, starting with a quick stop at the sea turtle hatcheries. The baby sea turtles were cute but I couldn’t help wondering if they were anything like the box turtles we used to play with as kids, the ones that peed on you when you picked them up. Oh well, we played with the baby sea turtles anyway. (Thank goodness for wipes and hand sanitizer!) After that we headed for our hotel and spent most of the afternoon lounging around the pool overlooking the Indian Ocean. The day ended with the grownups drinking beer on the balcony. Vacation doesn’t get much better than this!

Day 5 was supposed to be a tour of one of the china factories but we were never able to get it scheduled so instead it was more shopping but this time the kiddos stayed home with dad and it was just Dorothy and me, just like old times! It’s been way too long since I’ve gotten to shop and spend money with my former roommate. Clothes shopping, china shopping, all kinds of fun! We did go and run a few errands later that afternoon with the rest of the Intrigue family at the local shopping mall. On that excursion I learned that there are three types of stores in the Columbo shopping mall: one third are DVD stores, one third are cell phone stores, and the remaining third are everything else. Really? How many cell phones and DVDs do people need? Of course DVDs are only $1-2 so I guess that helps. I thought the fact that they are all on DVD-R was a little unusual but apparently that’s just how it is in Sri Lanka! (I’m not sure you could buy a legal DVD if you wanted to.)

Day 6, my last day in Sri Lanka. It started out with rain and a leaking roof. Fortunately there were no leaks over my bed. Unfortunately there was one right over Amelia’s bed. Other than that it was a pretty uneventful day at the Intrigue Compound. The highlight of the afternoon was the scooter/bike/foot races around the dining room table. (I swear I would have done better if I hadn’t been scared of breaking an arm or leg and ending up in a third world hospital.)

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and late that night my visit to the Intrigue family came to its conclusion as I headed back to the airport and on to the next leg of my journey. I had a wonderful trip and can’t wait see them again!