Alive!

For real this time. As London appeared before us, from the lofty vantage point of BA Flight 046, the confident Scottish voice of our pilot informed us that one of the landing gear tires was reading...well...flat. No worries, he informed us, there are three other tires on that landing gear, but, just as a precaution...

The cabin crew pulled out their little orange emergency hats with CREW written on them in big letters. Maybe so we could identify and stone them for their wrongdoings once safely on the ground. We went through a few safety drills and shuffled around for more convenient access to the doors upon "landing" (more vivid scenarios were flashing through my head, filled with such words as "pile-up", "fireball", "shredded", etc.). Naturally, the quick thinking and clever BA flight attendent chose me (such a fine judge of character) to sit near the door at the back of the plane and take her place just in case, in a worst scenario of worst scenarios, we actually did have a "problem" landing and in that "problem", the plane needed to be evacuated, and in that problem the flight attendant had been incapacitated to the point where she could not open the door, activate the slide, etc. ("If I'm unconscious or have broken arms or something, just unbuckle me and kick me down the slide." Sure Leslie, sure...I'll abort my dive for the door long enough to give your broken body a good, swift kick...)

Naturally the volunteer fireman in me was jumping up and down at the thought of real "excitement" (read: disaster, fire, traumatic injuries, CPR (my mask is in my carry-on bag! Yes!). And, just as naturally, with our heads between our legs and flight attendants screaming over and over again "BRACE! BRACE!" and the roar of the engines and the air brakes thundering and the tires screeching...

we landed sweetly and peacefully with a barely perceptible bump and swerve. Everyone sighed cheerfully, and the captain recieved the heartfealt applause of his crew, and they handed us little preprepared letters of apology for the inconvenience that they had prepackaged on the airplane just for emergencies such as these ones. On a side note, I couldn't help but laugh (a little morbidly) at the thought of hundreds of little, burning "We would like to apologise...You have chosen to fly with British Airways and we are deeply concerned we may not have met your expectations on this occasion..." letters wafting accross the runway through smoke and pall and destruction and the little, itty bitty charred tail of a Boeing 767-300 sticking our of the ground in the background. There's a contingency plan for everything...

At any rate, we had an exciting landing, and we didn't have to circle at all, waiting for permission to land. So if you were flying into London yesterday evening and got delayed...HA HA! I got there first :)

So here I am safely, sitting in Helmut's flat and wondering what to do today in London. I think I'll go grab some fish and chips, and maybe visit the Imperial War Museum. Or go play rugby in a park somewhere...

Tomorrow will be another plane ride, hopefully uneventful because it is a nice, large, new Boeing 777 and we are over all that water...it's all right though, because I know how to swim. In other news, it'll be terrifically difficult to decide which movies to watch; Kill Bill Vol. 1 is the obvious choice for the first, but then it's between Return of the King, Mystic River, the Last Samurai...it's a tough choice! On the other hand, I have my own screen, so I could just go and channel surf between all of them...

At any rate, I will be home tomorrow eve...and that is as good as anyone could ask for.

Cheers!
Dan