As I sat yesterday morning in the seat of a small airplane, my gangly legs pressed against the seat in front of me, waiting on the runway for “mechanical troubles” to be resolved, I remembered a series of travel columns from the San Francisco Chronicle that I read several years ago in a journalism class.
In them, author John Flinn outlined the seven stories he believes are essential for every traveler, and then recounted his own version of each.
“Go ahead and visit every one of those ‘1000 Places to See Before You Die,’ as catalogued in the best-selling book,” he wrote. “But spare your friends the description of the Taj Mahal. Yes, it’s beautiful. And, yes, of course, the Great Barrier Reef is awesome. Everybody knows this. And we don’t need to hear about the seventh hole at Pebble Beach. What we want to hear are stories.”
And the best stories, Flinn noted, come from the worst experiences – the ones you don’t find in the “…Before You Die” books. According to Flinn’s version of the pre-death to-do list, travelers should be able to tell a good bus story, bathroom story, airplane story, animal story, hotel story, food story and guide story.
Recalling Flinn’s travel tales and those of my friends and family, helped me keep my flight-induced frustration from boiling over. I took solace in remembering that my boyfriend is five-for-five on delayed flights out of Minneapolis, the last one coming after the plane had already taken off only to suck a goose into its engine and return, quickly, to ground.
And after all, the “airplane story” I was experiencing was, unfortunately, all too common. Delays. Awkward runs through airport terminals, carry-on bags banging against one’s thighs. Missed connections. More delays. The dreaded “mechanical troubles.” And the fear of lost luggage. In the end, I arrived home nearly 24 hours after I entered the airport – just 14 hours after my family, who drove, had arrived at their destination.
I did, however, hear an airplane story that, I think, even Flinn would consider noteworthy. A fellow traveler told us how, on his flight immediately before the one we were on, a woman had her Miniature Chihuahua in a tiny, fabric dog carrier. She set the carrier on the seat next to her and turned about the same time the approximately 300-pound man assigned to that seat sat down. The dog, sadly, was crushed by the man’s bottom. General melee followed as the woman cried, the man called his wife to explain why he needed to buy a stranger a dog and the flight attendant removed the dead dog from the plane.
Suddenly, I felt good about my airplane story, considering myself lucky it didn’t end with deceased pets or goose feathers. And despite Flinn’s assertions, I’m happy to keep my travel stories rather common.