Holiday Inn Express

I just saw the Holiday Inn Express ad with the party clown who thinking he could be a rodeo clown because he had stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. Evidently there is a pilot one and that reminded me of this: The other day we were flying from San Antonio to Salt Lake City. I was in the back jumpseat and some guy was talking to me. He was joking cause somehow he found out we stayed at the H.I.E. the night before. He was asking if I was sure they were real pilots. I told him yes, we had been flying together for several days. Then at the end of the flight we were about to land in SLC, headed down to the ground, and suddenly we were headed the other way. Back up into the sky we were just leaving. Everyone was looking at me and asking what was going on. I'm like, how the heck am I supposed to know??? Do you see me up in the cockpit?? Then the guy next to me was like, are you sure they're really pilots? Turns out some other plane was taking too long to get off the ground and they told us to abort the landing. It was a really strange feeling though, heading down, then heading just as steeply back up. Not a sensation I've experienced while working so far. It happened once when I was a passenger going into Denver but it was cause of turbulence so you could figure out what was going on. Kind of a funny coincidence that that happened on the same flight we had the conversation questioning our pilot's validity.

After that our aborted landing, I started doing what I'm assuming a lot of people do, which makes them afraid to fly. I started thinking about what could really happen and what it would be like if something bad happened. I'm still not scared but am aware what is and what isn't healthy for me to dwell on. Then that night, as I flipped through the channels trying to find something to lull me to sleep, I found a show about a plane crash. Cheerful huh? It's still not something I worry about. People don't drive around worrying about car wrecks. I hate to think that it would ever happen to me, and the odds are really low, but I like to think that I could handle it if it did. And if I didn't make it, then I'd be dead so I wouldn't care anyway :-P (The philosophy my father dearest and I used to harp on whenever we thought of doing something awful that would kill us.) Anyway, I don't think worry is healthy. There are so many bad, awful, painful, gruesome things that can happen to us on a daily basis, but you will seriously going insane if you think about them.

Paul told the Phillipians "Finally brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy - meditate on these things." I believe that God knows best, and He doesn't want me thinking about dreadful things, so I'm not going to.

The whole Holiday Inn Express thing was really funny though.