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Related: Culture Forums, Support Forums1st time on a plane. Where'd you go
Last edited Sun Mar 20, 2022, 01:29 AM - Edit history (1)
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COMO PARK, MINNEAPOLIS, St Paul MN
Family wedding. I was 16.
Disney world, I was 30 something.
sprinkleeninow
(20,208 posts)left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)1968
Moved there to take a job in a mental institution.
I worked there for 5 years.
Skittles
(153,104 posts)my dad was military, mum was a Brit who liked to go back home
brewens
(13,536 posts)It was our community college geology club that chartered the plane. A twin-engine Beechcraft.
It was fairly cloudy. I'm not making this up. The pilots spotted the Toutle River through a hole in the clouds and said we could get down there, but it would take a "maneuver". We voted on and it was a unanimous go for it. Did I say maneuver? I meant dive bomb!
We dove and pulled out zipping along the river. It was really cool! At first the trees were normal, then brown needles on one side, then all brown, then no needles, then branches blown off, then trees blown over.
I think it's Spirit Lake there which isn't real big but was almost totally covered with trees. We were so low that the pilot made two passes and banked so we could look up to see all of what was left of the mountain.
$15. I and a buddy were just in the intro to geology class, not the club, but they had extra seats, so we got to go. Took a hooter too and snuck off and smoked it at the Walla Walla, WA airport.
secondwind
(16,903 posts)had just gotten the position of Attaché Commercial of the Dominican Legation. Mom, sis and Dad flew down.
Response to Budi (Original post)
secondwind This message was self-deleted by its author.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,852 posts)... to visit an older brother stationed over there.
Refueled in London, but only saw their airport through a window that was covered with rain droplets.
The bizarre staring habits of the Germans made me wish that we'd stayed in England, who spoke English anyway, but more than 40 years have passed and I've still never visited England in the interim.
"The Germanic Stare Down"
https://www.spiegel.de/international/the-germanic-stare-down-watcha-lookin-at-granny-a-418068.html
Ocelot II
(115,570 posts)BTW, Como Park is in St. Paul, not Minneapolis.
Budi
(15,325 posts)2nd timd I was in Mpls was early 70's for an Alice Cooper concert. "Welcome to my nightmare".. I believe I had a pretty good time!
applegrove
(118,454 posts)Archae
(46,297 posts)I even filmed the trip, I was 18 at the time.
Budi
(15,325 posts)👍
Kittycatkat
(1,356 posts)brer cat
(24,513 posts)Wonderful trip!
Archae
(46,297 posts)3 and a half hour trip, was I happy to get out and stretch my legs.
brer cat
(24,513 posts)I was too excited at the time to notice. I was also a whole lot younger and more flexible!
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,852 posts)It felt easy compared to my stupid "bucket list" idea of traveling coach by Amtrak to get there. (It was my first time riding anywhere by train.) That was a multi-day trip in which I finally broke the rules and sneaked into the dining car after-hours to sleep flat, near the end of that trip from Portland OR to Sacramento CA.
I took the train route that goes through Glacier National Park instead of a more direct route, hoping to see it, but my train instead went through flat Eastern Montana at WALKING SPEED for hours, then later flinging the passengers from side to side as it moved fast across the winding tracks going through the mountains in pitch-black night.
Amtrak was better than the even more cramped conditions traveling by Greyhound bus, I suppose.
Sleeping in a tent at places like Big Sur and Point Reyes was much more restful than the trains!
Even a loud mountain lion in heat at Point Reyes, which kept returning to my tent to scream about her desire to mate, didn't disturb my sleep as much as traveling so far in coach-class.
By the way, I almost unzipped the tent at night to chase away the "large bird" that kept screeching around my tent. I'd seen some very large birds (vultures?) while hiking at Point Reyes, so I assumed it was one of them! I recorded the screams and played it for a ranger the following day, who informed me it was a female cougar in heat.
She'd get quiet and walk away (I could hear slight rustling of flora) after I yelled at it through the tent, but she kept coming back to do it again. It lasted for a few hours that night. Sounded like this:
Sneederbunk
(14,275 posts)Kittycatkat
(1,356 posts)happybird
(4,586 posts)Two of my best friends were one year older than me. Jason left for Indiana University, Holly went to Arizona State. I missed them terribly. Jason and I flew (separately) to AZ to visit Holly. It was wonderful to be with them again and we had a fantastic time. We even caught a Dead show at Compton Terrace.
TheBlackAdder
(28,160 posts)vercetti2021
(10,155 posts)From Amarillo to Sacramento to see my grandparents. Awful time. Got a wicked sunburn and bad rash from being buried in sand. Grandparents were kinda assholes to my mom as well.
radical noodle
(7,997 posts)I was 17 and our senior trip. It was 1965 and the World's Fair was in New York. The entire trip is now just a blur, but we had a great time. It's the little things that still stick in my mind.
electric_blue68
(14,807 posts)Which actually we flew down through a thunderstorm over 'Lanta. I didn't fly (except for returning home) again till 12 yrs later!
But my most amazing flight for me was in '16 when my Aunt invited me to make art with her on her studio that was part of their house where she lived w my Uncle in a picturous village in Western Switzerland.
Took off near sunset. My longest flight ever 8+ hours. SwissAir (good food). In the middle of the night - the ride was so smooth, barely vibrations. Finally arriving toward Geneva in the morning.passing by the partly clad in clouds/mist Alps. Wow!
jmowreader
(50,524 posts)I was going to basic training at Fort Dix.
beveeheart
(1,368 posts)And I was scared to death. My 2nd flight was from NYC to Nice, France, still scared but really really wanted to see France.
HubertHeaver
(2,520 posts)San antonio, Tx
pecosbob
(7,533 posts)JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,314 posts)Submariner
(12,497 posts)Grape Lakes naval boot camp 65
childfreebychoice
(476 posts)Hubby figured I'd start with short trip. Been a travel bunny, ever since
Shipwack
(2,156 posts)Nt
List left
(595 posts)I flew by myself to NC to visit my grandmother. It seemed like everyone was smoking, the cabin was full of smoke. I got to visit the pilot in the cockpit of the plane and he gave me pilot wings.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,852 posts)... trying to improve the safety of air travel.
Strangely, it did in some ways...
https://historydaily.org/smoking-on-airplanes-facts-stories
Smoking Made Flying Safer
The idea that flaming tar could make flying safer is laughable but absolutely true. It has to do with the tiny cracks in an airplane's fuselage that tend to form when the craft is hurtling through the air at 500 miles per hour thousands of feet above the ground. These cracks and holes need to be immediately detected and fixed, and those death sticks made finding them much easier. All engineers had to do was look for nicotine stains where the smoke was escaping. In 1988, when two congressmen pushed forward legislation to improve the depth of equipment checks, one of them remarked "The easiest and most common way to detect leaks in the fuselage today is to look for tobacco smoke stains on the outside metal. Not very reassuring, is it?"
I still have unpleasant memories of my father smoking in the car during long trips. I'm surprised that I never barfed in the back seat.
Laffy Kat
(16,366 posts)Dad was a hobby pilot and we flew all over the south in different Cessnas. The first time I flew commercially was up to Chicago with our folks to visit friends.
Backseat Driver
(4,377 posts)pre-dawn - on 2nd leg, we lost the A/C over the Pacific, all the ice cubes melted, and the flight attendants recommended pulling down the window shades to keep the cabin cooler...unpleasant to say the least.
eShirl
(18,477 posts)My dad was a pilot and co-owned a small plane with a bunch of his buddies.
I was 5 or 6 the first time I got to up with him and an older sibling.
The small cars below reminded me of HotWheels and Matchbox!
Emile
(22,449 posts)ProudMNDemocrat
(16,686 posts)I was 15. Took a flight from LAX to San Jose on a PSA 727.
MOMFUDSKI
(5,404 posts)back in '66. Newly married and flying to join my Air Force husband. Not too many passengers so most of us had all 3 seats across to ourselves. Guy across the aisle from me was a businessman in a suit (one got dressed up to fly back then) and he ordered a martini. Stew brought the baby bottles and glass of rocks. He poured the gin into the glass and the vermouth bottle had a spray-top and he spritzed 2 spritzes into the glass. Talk about a DRY martini. He had stew bring him gin bottles twice more. When he asked her for a fourth bottle she said, "Sir, I think you have had enough". He said OK and promptly fell asleep. I was a kid and very impressed with the whole trip.
I was three. I went to Austria where I would live for the next year.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,475 posts)Most of the time crash sites of general aviation aircraft (small private planes) look like lots of trash scattered in the woods.
Age 17, heading to Annapolis for induction to the Naval Academy.
rownesheck
(2,343 posts)was to London out of Houston. It was a class trip my senior year in high school. It sounds weird, but to calm my nerves, I told myself "Well, if the plane crashes and I die, there's nothing I can do about it." That somehow worked.
Oh, also, a large drill team group was on the same flight and they got bumped down to coach and our group was bumped to business class! Or at least that's how I remember it. Either way, I had a large comfy seat and my own TV screen!
On the way back I was in coach though. Boo!
tblue37
(65,211 posts)zanana1
(6,102 posts)mopinko
(69,981 posts)was already divorced w a kid, 25 i think.
needed a cheap vaca.
dameatball
(7,392 posts)Fla Dem
(23,562 posts)Went on vacation with some friends from work. Early 70's. I have a picture of us standing up at the bottom of the stairs leading into the plane. Yes we walked out to the plane on the tarmac back then. We're dressed as if we were going to church. It was a big deal!
avebury
(10,951 posts)We stopped in Tulsa and they made everyone get off of the plane. When we were allowed to reboard we found out that then VP LBJ had boarded the plane with his people. My mother was irritated because they took our seats.
AngryOldDem
(14,061 posts)I was in my 20s. It was a warm-up to my vacation in the United Kingdom that I took a few months later.
marked50
(1,364 posts)Age 7. Year 1960. Plane- Uncle's Piper Tri-Pacer. What fun.
Commercial: Boeing 707. Year 1963. Kansas City to Los Angeles. Visiting
Glorfindel
(9,714 posts)I was 20 years old.
LuckyCharms
(17,410 posts)Auggie
(31,129 posts)Got one too!
Angleae
(4,479 posts)I think I was 6 years old.
NNadir
(33,455 posts)I'd never been west of eastern, PA, and I was moving to California, more or less on a crazy whim, with just what I could fit in a suitcase.
Later in my life I ended up spending half my life on planes. After a while it kind of sucked.
csziggy
(34,131 posts)My parents had taken my oldest sister to Duke University for her to start her post graduate degree. They took a further vacation, but we had to return home to start school. So two unaccompanied minors on a jet plane. It would have been mid-1960s.
I loved flying then. The flight attendants treated us great and everything went smoothly. I think my grandmother picked us up but I honestly don't remember.
I didn't fly again until 1977. We were selling a family business to a big corporation and I had to go down to sign the paperwork. I flew from Tallahassee to Tampa - I supposed to go to Orlando, but fog delayed the flight and I ended up on a different one. Big hoopla when I wasn't where I was supposed to be.
I had a return ticket for the next day but when the corporate guys heard I was headed to Tallahassee, they invited me to fly on their Lear jet. It was cool as shit but the pilots were not happy. They'd hoped to have a nice long return flight to Chicago, but had to make the short hop to Tallahassee. When I called my husband from the private terminal at the airport to come pick me up, he was confused. At first he thought my flight out had been cancelled and I'd spent the entire day at the airport. That was also the only time I have ever been in a really high building - the meeting was on something like the 30/40th floor. I did not expect my ears to pop in the elevator on the way up!
yellowdogintexas
(22,214 posts)there was a stop in DC but I do not remember changing planes.
Rhiannon12866
(204,586 posts)And I'm still not a fan though I've been overseas 3 times. I had a panic attack when flying from New York to Helsinki and the Finnair flight attendants couldn't have been nicer. I haven't flown since before 9/11.
Mad_Dem_X
(9,545 posts)I was scared to death. I still get scared every time I have to get on a plane.
panader0
(25,816 posts)I had to get about 8 shots first from bubonic plague to typhoid, tetanus, etc., etc.
frogmarch
(12,152 posts)1951
Emergency landing on Wake Island because of engine failure. After a day in Honolulu, on to America!
Doc_Technical
(3,521 posts)then LA to San Antonio TX for Air Force basic training.
Zorro
(15,721 posts)PanAm Constellation. Dad was stationed at Ramstein and we were heading there to meet him. I remember waking up at sunrise and seeing how beautiful it was flying across the cloud tops.
The return flight in 1961 was a lot more interesting. Flying Tigers Airlines DC-6, engine troubles had us divert to Shannon, Ireland, and then again to Gander, Goose Bay Labrador, before finally arriving at McGuire AFB, NJ.