The Conical Glass: Traveling

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Traveling - Part I

I practically grew up on planes. My grandparents lived in Sweden, so we used to go there every other summer, and we visited my other grandparents in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, each winter. I never experienced any anxiety; I did experience boredom on the long-haul flights, but that was different. When I was a teenager, back in the Sony Walkman era, I used to purchase a new LP before we went on a trip and record it on cassette without listening to it so I would have something to look forward to. Among the records I remember buying and recording are Roxy Music's Greatest Hits, Haircut 100's Pelican West and Kim Wilde's debut album.

In adulthood, I found that I'd turned into a white-knuckle flier, especially when there's turbulence. Unlike a lot of aerophobes, I decided I was not going to let my anxiety stop me from traveling. We visit my parents in Florida every year, and the people who have read this blog over the years have heard about my trips to Jamaica, Sweden, Mexico, New York City, North Carolina, Minnesota, New Mexico and other locales. But my fear of flying has also been a recurring theme here. I'm usually OK with short trips, but long ones (2+ hours) make me extremely nervous. Since we had to fly to Michigan last month to visit my folks (they only spend the winters in Florida), which involves some long stretches in the air -- our flight home, from Detroit, was going to be 5 hours long -- I decided to try something new.

One of my long-time clients had become a certified clinical hypnotherapist, and her specialties included eliminating phobias. I was a skeptic and felt pretty certain that I couldn't be hypnotized, but I figured there was no harm in trying, so I set up an appointment with her a couple days before our trip. (She lives in Southern California, but works over the phone as well as in person.)

Weird thing #1: I went out and ran an errand and totally forgot about our appointment. I'm not the kind of person who forgets that kind of thing -- in fact, I tend to be early for everything. Luckily, she forgave me, but it was so embarrassing!

Weird thing #2: When I finally rang, I was on the phone with her for an hour. I know that's true because the phone bill showed that our conversation was 61 minutes long. And yet I have no recollection of the hour passing. I can recall what she asked me in the first 10-15 minutes (I had to describe a particularly unpleasant, turbulent flight I was on a few years ago flying home from London in vivid detail), but what went on during the rest of our call is shrouded in mystery.

Our flight to Michigan (connecting through the airport in Minneapolis) was uneventful, but the flight home -- the 5-hour flight -- was pretty bad; the "fasten seat belt" sign was on almost the whole time, and for some reason we couldn't land in San Francisco right away and had to circle over the Pacific Ocean for 30 extra minutes. During the flight, I was aware of the turbulence, but I wasn't bothered by the turbulence. I could even concentrate on a book, which I normally can't do if I'm hyper-nervous, and got through almost all of Alexander McCall Smith's latest. (Bringing a book I was looking forward to reading was a key part of my plan.)

Stay tuned for Part II...

posted by 125records @ 8:25 PM

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