The Day I almost Died : the flight home.

After a wonderful and exciting trip I was a little sad to have to go home, especially knowing that I would be starting school in  about a week, and summer was ending. But I got on the first leg of my trip back home. I was flying by myself again. My Parents flight left later that day. From Boston to Memphis was smooth sailing. I still wasn't feeling too great and was able to sleep a little, read a little and we landed with out any problems. Well my flight from Memphis back to Salt Lake was a different story. We took off fine, and about half way into the flight we started hitting turbulence. Nothing too abnormal but as we got closer and closer to our destination it kept getting worse and worse. I should mention that we were on this tiny little plane. One of the smallest I have ever been on.  I have never had a fear of flying, but I started right then to fear for my life. Finally we are circling around the SLC airport getting ready to land. We were flying down and hitting huge pockets of air. We were bouncing all over the place. I was starting to feel pretty light headed, I am sure I looked like most of the people around me, wide eyed and terrified. The Big Cowboy of a man next to me was cursing under his breath. He told me he doesn't like to fly. This was not helping. Well we get down to the runway and just as we are about to touch down a gust of wind sweeps under one of the wings of the plane causing the plane to tip to one side. Well the pilot immediately swooped back up and told us that we were going to have to circle around and try again. At this point a lady two rows behind me started to feel very sick, the flight attendants came back and decided it would be best to get the oxygen out and see if there was a doctor on board. Ok... wow this doesn't help anyones  nerves. The pilot gets on saying they are trying to figure out what to do... WHAT they don't know what to do. They are professionals, they have to know what to do. I can hear the Dr. and flight attendants talking a few rows back. He says the girl will be ok, she is just having a bit of an anxiety attack, and should get off the plane as soon as possible. That is when they say we are going to have to land soon no matter what because we are going to get low on gas. GAS. We need that to fly. At this point I am about to have an anxiety attack. I start having flash backs to what I said to my parents as I left. Did I thank them enough for the trip. Did they know how much I loved them. I am not exaggerating this all went through my head. I was thinking about how if we crashed what the chances were for survival. Maybe if we landed in the salt lake we would float? This was one time having an active imagination was not the greatest thing. It might have been my imagination but it felt like the air was getting thinner, it was definitely getting hotter. I of course was in the Exit row so I had to think about how I was going to help everyone else off the plane. It was terrible. Well finally after what felt like hours and after we had tried going down again unsuccessfully the pilot gets on and tells us we are going to have to land in Provo to fill up on gas and wait for the winds to pass Salt Lake. The flight attendants ask him if people can get off in Provo (mainly for the girl who is on oxygen.) The pilot comes back on saying whoever wants to get off in Provo  can but they would still have to pick up their bags in SLC. I was all over this. I only had carry on, I was a light packer, Thank goodness! The runway in Provo is short, the pilot told us, so our landing was going to be hard and they were going to have to hit the breaks right away. Well they were right. We hit down pretty hard and the breaks slammed us down. But we were on the ground. I was alive. I called Carly to see if she would be able to pick me up from the Provo airport, and then called Derek who was already waiting at the SLC airport (we were obviously running late at this point) and told him to turn around and start heading towards Provo. I hopped off the plane at first chance, and looked around at the anxious faces still on the plane. They had to wait for a fill up and then were going to head back up to the DEATH ZONE and land in SLC. A few others got off the plane with me. We were relieved to be on the ground and breathing fresh air. It was one of the best feelings in the world. I said about a million prayers that day, ending with a Thank you for keeping me alive prayer. Who knew that at one point in the day I would look out my window and see this and think how pretty.

And then a few hours later I would think I am GOING to DIE.  Well that is the story of how I thought I was going to die. True story. Also this was a long one, if you made it through Thanks. I hope it was worth your time.