We're Taking American Airlines This Time

Less than three days now until I leave for Costa Rica. This is exciting. I've only ever been out of the country once before, and that was 11 years ago, when Lacey and I went on the K.A.R.E. trip to Peru. (A bunch of middle-school students spent the year raising money so we could go study rain-forests for a week.) I pulled out an old journal of mine the other day and read through everything I had written about that trip, and the Amazon and the rain-forests. One of the most dramatic parts, though, was simply getting there:

6/26/93 - 8:05 pm
Today we had to get up at 3:30 am in order to get to San Francisco for our first plane. We took Delta to Dallas, TX then to Miami, FL. Right now we’re on a Faucett plane to Iquitos, Peru. We’ll probably get there at 11:30 tonight. When we got on, there was some confusion about the teachers’ tickets. N. (sitting next to me) was sure the plane would take off without them and we’d all die in Peru, but they got on.
...
6/27/93 - 1:44 am
Tonight we’re staying in El Hotel Riande Continental in Panama! All but one of the engines on our plane stopped and one wing was on fire for a little while. We’re going on to Iquitos tomorrow. Everyone was getting freaked out, N. kept saying “we’re gonna die” and everyone was reading the saftey manuals and getting really nervous. Everyone cheered when we landed here.

Reading this now, I'm sort of surprised that I wrote that little about it, given how exciting (read "scary") it was. I didn't mention the thunderstorm in the Gulf of Mexico that we were flying over at the time, or the fact that I couldn't find my inflatable life vest. Then, of course, we eventually had to head home from Peru, at which time we found ourselves on the exact same plane (#290) that had broken down on the first trip. But apart from scaring the willies out of us, it didn't have any more problems. I have never encountered Faucett airlines since then, which has been fine with me. We're taking American this time around.