{"id":5096,"date":"2015-09-27T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-09-27T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=5096"},"modified":"2015-09-23T10:06:04","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T15:06:04","slug":"im-on-an-airplane-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2015\/09\/im-on-an-airplane-again\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m on an Airplane&#8230;Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Later today, I will take an airplane trip. This trip will (ideally) consist of leaving Portland, Oregon and arriving in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the 43rd &#8211; 43rd! &#8211; airplane trip of my life.<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s the real kicker: I don&#8217;t even like flying. I used to be quite terrified of it, and the only way I could get through a couple of flights (such as my 1995 trip home from Germany and my 2001 trip home from Nova Scotia) was by drinking heavily.<\/p>\n<p>It would be a stretch to say I have <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/aviophobia\">aviophobia<\/a> anymore, but I still really detest the activity. In my defense, I haven&#8217;t instigated the majority of my flights, and I haven&#8217;t paid for many of them, so it&#8217;s not like I&#8217;m inflicting this unpleasantness on myself. Usually.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5097\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/airplane-movie.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5097\" class=\"wp-image-5097 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/airplane-movie-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"airplane%20movie\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/airplane-movie-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/airplane-movie-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/airplane-movie.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5097\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is what I imagine is taking place in the cockpit of every flight I&#8217;ve ever been on.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Nevertheless, in celebration of my 43rd trip into the upper troposphere, I thought I&#8217;d do what I do best: Provide excruciatingly detailed trivia about my history of flying&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>*My first flight was at the wee age of 7 weeks old. I flew with my parents to New York.<\/p>\n<p>*I&#8217;ve flown to 17 different destinations. This includes layovers and return trips.<\/p>\n<p>*The place I&#8217;ve flown to most often is, obviously, the Twin Cities. Excluding home base, my most common destination has been Orlando, Florida, which I&#8217;ve flown to four times.<\/p>\n<p>*The biggest gap between flights was 8 years and 7 months (I had flown home from New York at the age of 3\u00bd, and didn&#8217;t fly again until I was 12).<\/p>\n<p>*The smallest gap between flights has been mere minutes (when catching a connecting flight). Excluding those, the smallest gap was 2 days, when I returned home from Texas after being there a mere 48 hours. Excluding return trips, the smallest gap was earlier this year: I flew home from Salt Lake City in April, and was back on an airplane on my way to Massachusetts just over two months later, in June.<\/p>\n<p>*I&#8217;d never been on more than 4 airplane flights in a single year&#8230;until now. I&#8217;ve already been on 6 flights this year, and in a few hours, I&#8217;ll be on my 7th.<\/p>\n<p>*The most frequent month of the year for plane trips has been June, with ten separate plane trips. I&#8217;ve never been on\u00a0an airplane in February or July.<\/p>\n<p>*The biggest group I&#8217;ve ever flown with was that trip in April, when about 40 faculty and students from Hamline University all boarded a flight together.<\/p>\n<p>*The smallest group I&#8217;ve ever flown with is one: Just me. I&#8217;ve been all by myself on 18 airplane trips.<\/p>\n<p>*My most frequent traveling companion is Jennifer: We&#8217;ve been on 14 plane rides together. Fifteen as of tonight.<\/p>\n<p>*Despite being my youngest child, Emmett has accompanied me on more airplane trips than any of my other kids. We&#8217;ve been together 3 times, and that number is bumping up to 4 by day&#8217;s end. Owen has been with me on two plane rides and Isla, one.<\/p>\n<p>*The longest plane ride I&#8217;ve been on was over 6 hours, returning from Frankfurt, Germany and landing in Detroit. The shortest ride was about 40 minutes from Dallas to Amarillo.<\/p>\n<p>*I took one plane ride on my birthday: The day I turned 24, I flew to Dallas. Since I was born at 11:03 at night, I was still 23 during the plane right, though. (This was not the same trip when I went to Amarillo.)<\/p>\n<p>*As noted above, I haven&#8217;t paid for most of my plane tickets. In fact, I&#8217;ve only paid for 8 of them &#8211; less than 20 percent. Well, I suppose I technically paid for 12 of them, because I did pay for my trips to and from Germany (which included layovers in Detroit). However, my Dad used his frequent flyer miles for me, which meant I merely paid the tax ($20), so as far as I&#8217;m concerned, he &#8220;paid&#8221; for the majority of the cost of those tickets. And really, I&#8217;ve paid for several of Jennifer&#8217;s flights, too (including the one later today), so I&#8217;ve paid for a lot more than 8 tickets, even though they weren&#8217;t always mine. My children &#8211; who have collectively been on 7 flights (soon-to-be 8) &#8211; have always flown free.<\/p>\n<p>*The remaining 31 airplane tickets have been paid for by my employer, my university, my parents, my grandparents, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abo-ncle.org\/\">American Board of Opticianry<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NFRYEOo2RmE\">Oprah Winfrey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Later today, I will take an airplane trip. This trip will (ideally) consist of leaving Portland, Oregon and arriving in the Twin Cities. It&#8217;s the 43rd &#8211; 43rd! &#8211; airplane trip of my life. And here&#8217;s the real kicker: I don&#8217;t even like flying. I used to be quite terrified of it, and the only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5098,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096\/revisions\/5098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}