Travel bloggin'

I just arrived in Calgary for a training seminar after
a four hour flight in a middle seat, with an extra hour tacked on
due to smoke emanating from a landing gear wheel. I felt like
Bill Cosby's comedic dental patient;" 'moke? 'ere's 'moke unda da
plane?" But not panicking because I can see the gate, and the law
says you can't burn up in a plane if you can see the gate.

But, instead of driving the last 300 yards to the gate the pilot
stopped to wait for the fire trucks, who burst out of the fire station
like this was the first excitement in months, which it probably was.

Our super informative pilot then told us that the fire department
didn't want to spray the wheel, they wanted to bring out a fan to
cool it. Another 15 hot minutes while they dragged out a 1/4 mile
extension chord. or maybe just setup the fan or something.

They then detected a fluid leaking out of the landing gear, so the pilot
shut down the engines and the air conditioning, and called for a tug
to drag us to the gate. Each. Step. Was. Announced. By. The. Pilot.
But not in a good way to keep us informed, in a bad way to indicate
that this was our captain's first experience with something unusual
happening, in a sort of a "I see the top of the baby's head" kind of voice.

Well anyway, I'm here in calgary for a few days, sunset is around 10pm
local time, so I got a brief glimpse of the city...it looks like western kansas.
Rolling hills, with the city perched in a big bowl, the expectation of mountains
in the west.

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