Just got back yesterday from my first of two week long trips this July. From the 2nd thru the 7th we were down in Georgia spending time with my little brother before he was deployed to Iraq for a year.
Before I go into that while flying for the past week, I had a moment where a light bulb appeared above my head and proceeded to flicker for a few moments before popping.
Airplanes come with oxygen masks. They also are equipped with flotation devices. Even seat belts to make sure you don’t fly out of your seat in the event of turbulence.
Where the F are the parachutes? How have we flown this long without parachutes on commercial airlines? If it were up to me, I would rather give up the flotation devices for parachutes. Considering that 95% of the continential flying is not over water, what on earth will a flotation device do for me? Nothing. But a parachute, that could save lives. How many times has an airplane identified an issue or had some sort of failure where an emergency landing would be required? In those situations how difficult would it have to to have made an announcement for everyone to lift up your seat, strap it on y our back and make your way to the door to jump? If I knew that the plane was possibly going to crash you wouldn’t get any argument out of me when it came time to jump. I am sure you would have those that would refuse to go and I say that’s their choice to stay on the plane and see if they can right the ship without crashing, but for me I don’t think so.
Take the guess work out of it. Include one of those slider things that were on planes during WWII. Put the ring on the slider, jump out and the chute automatically deploys. Piece of cake right? I would imagine at 40,000 feet you probably couldn’t breath well so maybe a small oxygen mask with tank that could prevent passing out for 10 minutes could be included as well. I don’t know. This was purely an observation as I was flying and my wife didn’t buy my idea but then again she rarely does.
My trip to visit with my little brother was very nice. Short but nice. I can’t really understand what could have been going through his mind the week before leaving his wife for a year but I don’t believe it was good. The one thing that my wife and I did agree on is that we sure as hell wouldn’t want 3 other adults and 5 children living in our house during that final week. They housed my mother, her dog, my older brother and his wife, along with their five children. My wife and I didn’t want to get involved with that circus so we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Northlake in Columbus Georgia. I hesitate to include the Express in the description since this was one of the nicest Holiday Inn hotels I have ever stayed in. The bottom line in my thought is that I would want some alone time with the wife if I knew we would be apart for so long. Granted they probably got that alone time with everyone in the house sleeping but who wants to muffle anything when it’s going to be a year apart? Not this guy.
My little brother departed Tuesday evening on his journey to Baghdad, and the last anyone heard from him yesterday morning (Thursday) he called from Kuwait where he will be for two weeks before he moves into Baghdad. There will be lots of prayers said over the next 12 months for his safe return.
I have so much more to say, but no more time, so i’ll put something up again soon. Have a great weekend!

Beginning Friday night thru Sunday night, I twisted balloons on six different occassions for six different events and by the time I got home Sunday night and hit the bed, I was ready for my weekend to begin. That was at 9:30pm on a Sunday night. Not much of a weekend for me. Add to the craziness the fact that I am fighting off what I can only hope is Bronchitis since that would be a lot better than the swine flu and you have yourself one miserable individual. 



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