A 23 minute journey

In 1903, the Wright brothers did the world a solid by inventing the first successful airplane. Orville and Wilbur took the thrill of travelling across countries, continents and seas and transcended it into a different zone altogether. 11 years later, the first commercial flight took place. It was a short 23 minute long flight between Tampa and St Petersburg in the United States with the plane flying only 15 meters above about 30 kilometres of bay waters. It was short, but this 23 minute journey completely changed the face of travel.

Living the high life

I hate flying.

That’s a lie. The up-in-the-air part I can handle; it’s the take-off and landing that turn my stomach into a cesspit of anxiety.

Earlier this year, I experienced the worst landing of my life. As Emirates flight EK 306 approached the landing strip at the Beijing International Airport it descended down as unpleasantly as possible. When I was younger during thunder storms, I was quite the wuss. My aunt Maggie would calm me down by telling me that the big bangs were simply God rolling potatoes down the stairs. “Why would God be doing that?” I would ask. She didn’t have an answer but it soothed me none the less. During that landing it felt exactly as if the plane was one of those potatoes bouncing its way down through the smog-ridden Chinese sky.

That flight made me even more of a nervous flyer (Well, take off and land-er).

My ambition in life is to be a travel writer and travel usually involves flying (unless I’m resigned to travelling by foot, car, camel and/or boat— actually don’t even get me started on boats. That’s a whole other post). So, you may ask, how the heck do I plan on making the ‘travel’ aspect of my ‘travel writer’ plan work?