Faster than a Racecar

It was the mid 1990's, and I was sitting with my five year old son on a runway in Syracuse, New York, waiting for our flight to O'Hare Airport near Chicago to take off.  We were en route, my spouse, my son and I, to a family wedding in the Midwest.

My son had never flown before.  I wanted to make it as exciting as possible for my restless little boy, who would be cooped up in this metal tube full of people.  This was the age before smart phones, before the Internet had grabbed hold, before there was instant entertainment in the palm of your hand.

Now it was time to explain what would happen next.

"The plane is going to drive to a point on the runway and then stop.  Then it is going to accelerate really quick and take us up into the sky!" I exclaimed.  "At takeoff, we'll be going faster than a racecar!"

I tried my best to keep fear out of my voice.  There was one thing he didn't know as we sat there on the runway.  I'm scared of flying.

It wasn't always like this.  The first time I flew, in 1966 (I was 13) I loved it.  But several incidents over the years had made me, first, into a reluctant flyer, and later, someone who really didn't want to be up in the sky and managed not to be.  Fortunately, my job didn't require me to travel and we used a car for the majority of our vacation trips.  This time, though, time was at a premium and we had to fly.

We made the trip safely.  My son even got to visit the cockpit and got a pair of wings as a souvenir.

We flew one more trip, the following year, from Syracuse to California.  After that, neither he nor I had been on a plane since.  I had forgotten all about us ever traveling faster than a racecar.

Until the Sunday before last.

My son, now in his late 20's, was sent out to Chicago by his employer for training. The Sunday before last, he flew from Binghamton to Chicago by way of Detroit.

Obviously, since the mid 1990's, many things have changed.  One of those things is the ease in which you can track flights online.  Knowing an airline and flight number, you can find out the type of plane (his was an Airbus), the flight's status (on time? delayed? cancelled?), when they are boarding, when they are taxiing and the exact moment the flight takes off.  You can track the flight on a map, or read statistics giving the plane's speed and altitude.

So when my son texted me (good son!) to tell me he had arrived in Detroit, I decided to turn to the Internet and track him on the Detroit to Chicago leg on my laptop.  He had about a one hour layover.

That hour sped by.  The tracking website told me the hour and minute it was scheduled to take off.  I intended to track his plane's stats during the flight.  I was, as the saying goes, "geeking out". But then I remembered one more thing I needed to do.

Taken by my son

When the clock showed that it was time for takeoff, I remembered.

I whispered, just loud enough for my spouse to hear, "Faster than a racecar!"