{"id":133,"date":"2018-12-31T14:15:23","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hojnotes.com\/?p=133"},"modified":"2019-12-20T10:36:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T10:36:15","slug":"turbulence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/31\/turbulence\/","title":{"rendered":"Turbulence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

And we’re all just passengers tonight<\/p>

And we’re all just traveling through our lives<\/p>

We will reach our destination<\/p>

So just hang on for the ride<\/p>

Say a prayer and close your eyes<\/p>

It’s just a little turbulence.<\/p>

~ Bowling For Soup<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Cheryl sat next to me frantically fanning herself in the window seat, 29E, on Delta flight 804, CLE to ATL on Friday, December 28th, 2018.\u00a0 She kept her window shade pulled down.\u00a0 Foreboding clouds an unreliable reference, but I prefer seeing them anyway.\u00a0 I sat in the aisle seat listening to music through headphones, trying to read.\u00a0 The plane bounced around pretty good on its descent.\u00a0 A healthy storm front had swept across the eastern US.\u00a0 Cheryl claimed the pilot gave no warning and I was oblivious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To deal with the motion, the bumpy ride, you\u2019re supposed to imagine a rollercoaster ride.\u00a0 At the amusement park, you pay good money for the thrill of acceleration.\u00a0 Why not enjoy the fun, courtesy of Delta?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Has anyone ever accepted this?\u00a0 If it were that fun, the airline industry would charge a fee, changing course hundreds of miles to provide passengers the supposed universal thrill of jouncing through inclement weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one enjoys turbulence.\u00a0 Some are better at psychologically dealing.\u00a0 Out of the corner of my eye, I take comfort in the experienced, calm travelers placidly turning a page or sipping a cocktail, and I mimic best I can.\u00a0 I keep my head down although I\u2019m reading the same sentence over again.\u00a0 I reflect on all the flights I\u2019ve heard or read about that have met their demise due to turbulence on approach:\u00a0 zero.\u00a0 I think about the physics, the normal force, how it changes, unexpectedly, unpredictably; a dance whose secret steps exist between aluminum tube and gusting wind, engine thrust and pressure gradient.\u00a0 The normal force is just the seat pushing upward on your bottom.\u00a0 We\u2019re made aware of only when it changes.\u00a0 When the normal force increases, we feel heavy; it drops away, we feel light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think about relative motion.\u00a0 Unbelted flight attendants caught in the aisle suddenly fly up to crack their heads on the cabin ceiling – it\u2019s actually the airplane dropping while the unbelted stay in place.\u00a0 Inertia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a rollercoaster, there\u2019s a point of contact, the steel rail in view, just ahead, anticipatable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s safe to say the baby, a girl, age seven months or so, being held by her father and looking back at me from one row up, across the aisle, had never been on a rollercoaster before.\u00a0 This may have been the baby\u2019s maiden flight. \u00a0 She gave away no tells, although, in hindsight, I thought I saw a look of contentment under her wispy blonde locks, a well-fed, happy tummy look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Airplanes can roll, pitch, and yaw, which is to say, they tip every which way.  The engine\u2019s ominous revving reminds me the plane can move three additional ways, translationally.  The wonderful feeling of six degrees of freedom at work, riding the storm out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disconnect between the motion you see and the motion you feel overwhelms your senses and makes you dizzy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another baby, or young child, in the last row of the plane maybe eight rows behind us screamed like a banshee.\u00a0 The banshee, you\u2019ll remember, were flying creatures, those colorful winged pterodactyls the Na\u2019vi rode in the movie Avatar.\u00a0 The key to harnessing the flight power of the banshee was to neurally connect with the creatures by braiding your hair with their tails.\u00a0 I knew Cheryl\u2019s nerves were frayed when she kept looking to the rear of the plane to witness the blood-curdling source and said, \u201cThat scream cannot be coming from a human.\u201d\u00a0 Cheryl told me later that one of two children seated right behind us asked their father across the aisle in a preternaturally calm voice, as if she\u2019d received penance for the sin of coveting her sibling\u2019s toys, \u201cDaddy, are we going to die?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t hear a thing, listening to the recently departed (RIP) Lemmy Kilmister overwhelm my vestibular system with his gravelly growl, delivered like an ice pick to my auditory canal, courtesy of Bose, singing Motorhead\u2019s version of Chuck Berry\u2019s Run Run Rudolph.\u00a0 A line in the song goes, \u201cThen away went Rudolph, whizzing like a Saber jet\u201d referencing, I believe, the North American F-86 Sabre, sometimes called the Sabre-jet, the first \u2018swept wing\u2019 jet fighter employed by the U.S. in the Korean War (1950-1953).\u00a0 Makes sense as Chuck Berry\u2019s version was released in 1958.\u00a0 The swept wing was unique for angling backward from the body of the plane rather than at ninety degrees.\u00a0 The swept wing reduced air drag and improved dog fighting maneuvers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I offered my precious headphones to Cheryl.\u00a0 She listened for awhile but Stevie Nicks rasping Silent Night only seemed to exacerbate her misery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two purple-clad flight attendants, one tall, one short, on top of each other, haltingly walked, the tall one practically pushing the short one, either by training or just frantic, I\u2019m not certain. They clasped the headrests to steady themselves on their tandem wobble to the rear.\u00a0 The shorter attendant had her own issues, but the taller took one look at Cheryl on passing and said, \u201cOh Dear God, grab your bag already,\u201d in a tone that suggested Cheryl was acting childish, or worse, over-acting like a child, think Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weeks ago, Cheryl and I watched The Christmas Chronicles on Netflix, a movie in which a pair of siblings accidentally crash Santa\u2019s sleigh.\u00a0 The sleigh was equipped with a glowing control to show percent Christmas spirit, ebbing worldwide as the siblings teamed with Santa on a quest to repair the sleigh and save Christmas.\u00a0 Kurt Russell played Santa and you could tell he enjoyed over-acting his role.\u00a0 A slim Santa who absolutely does not do \u2018Ho-Ho-Ho\u2019.\u00a0 One night during our holiday stay with my mom, we watched Smokey and the Bandit.\u00a0 Burt Reynolds and Sally Field played it understated, cool and hot, respectively, but Jackie Gleason, as Sheriff Buford T. Justice, gloriously over-acted.\u00a0 Eye-bulging, spitting proclamations of stature, \u201cBoy, do you know who I am?\u00a0 I – am – Sheriff – Buford – T – Justice – of – Texas!\u201d stole the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too short a flight for a movie, I chanced a look, saw Cheryl\u2019s eyes squeezed shut, lower lip trembling, like she was trapped in a nightmare unable to wake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEric,\u201d Cheryl said, nails digging into my wrist, driving her head back into the headrest, \u201cget me off this plane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are lines on OK Go\u2019s song, Upside Down & Inside Out<\/a>, that go, \u201cDon\u2019t know where your eyes are, but they\u2019re not doin\u2019 what you said.  Don\u2019t know where your mind is baby, but you\u2019re better off without it.\u201d  The video for this song was filmed on a Zero-G flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reached into the pouch on the seat-back and found the barf bag.\u00a0 I puffed it open and comforted Cheryl by saying, \u201cHere.\u00a0 Take it.\u201d\u00a0 And then I noticed the baby across the aisle, staring.\u00a0 The baby\u2019s contented look was replaced by another, more dangerous look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vomit Comet is the nickname for a jet ride (a modified Boeing 727) you can take to simulate weightlessness.  The ride is offered by a company called Zero-G who promise you will float like an astronaut and fly like a superhero.  The plane follows a parabolic trajectory, the same as a projectile in free fall.  As passenger, you\u2019ll free fall along with the plane for 20 to 30 seconds.  For the privilege of fifteen of these half-minute parabolic maneuvers, you pay $4950 plus 5% tax. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martha Stewart and Stephen Hawking are quoted on the webpage, both using \u2018amazing\u2019 to describe the experience.  I found an interview with a Zero-G pilot who said, \u201cI don\u2019t really keep any stats, but it amounts to a rule of thirds – one-third violently ill, the next third moderately ill, and the final third not ill at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I failed to anticipate the violently ill third which included my wife, and now the baby who blew a pale yellow stream of baby chunks into her father\u2019s face. He turned his head and held the baby at arms\u2019 length.\u00a0 Mom pressed the call button but of course no attendant was unbelting.\u00a0 The plane\u2019s still bouncing, the baby\u2019s got a poker face, and a dribble of partially digested goo on her chin.\u00a0 To my left, the man across the aisle, directly behind the baby, was wiping his shirt and pants with a wet nap. I looked over at Cheryl.\u00a0 I did not share the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motion simulators<\/a> can duplicate six ways to move (six degrees of freedom) using three pairs of hydraulic actuators sandwiched between motion platforms in an arrangement called a hexapod.  Motion simulators are either occupant-controlled (like flight simulators used to train pilots and astronauts and teen drivers) or passive-rider (like theme park rides).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An airplane can rotate three ways: yaw, pitch, and roll.\u00a0 Cars, for the most part, are not free to rotate like planes, but the black Firebird Trans Am that Burt Reynolds\u2019 Bandit drove sure did.\u00a0 Every spin-out was a yaw, and the jump, nose up across the incomplete bridge, nose down onto the football field was a pitch.\u00a0 Sally Field\u2019s character gyrating out of her wedding gown while in the passenger seat caused the Trans Am to roll as did the scene (presumably, as it was left to the imagination) where Bandit finally removed his cowboy hat, leaving it perched and rocking atop the radio antennae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are straight-line equivalents to rotation\u2019s yaw, pitch, and roll.  They have interesting technical names:  sway, surge, and heave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The baby kept it together and so did Cheryl, neither surging nor heaving the rest of the flight.\u00a0 Although it did take Cheryl several hours of not swaying at home alone in bed to fully regain 100% Christmas spirit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And we’re all just passengers tonight And we’re all just traveling through our lives We will reach our destination So just hang on for the ride Say a prayer and close your eyes It’s just a little turbulence. ~ Bowling For Soup Cheryl sat next to me frantically fanning herself in the window seat, 29E, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hojnotes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}