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Luangwa Valley Dispatch
By Jake da Motta
Flying……..amazing isn’t it? I’ve settled into my seat, found both
ends of the lap belt and adjusted it for the inevitable fact that
the person in the seat before me was either a Hobbit or a
hippopotamus. The contents of the seat pocket are as universally
uninspiring as always. The laminated card showing the inhabitants of
Legoland calmly going through the emergency procedures in the event
of an aerial mishap, rather than the real picture of a bunch of
people frantically trying to stuff the contents of their
hand-luggage into their pockets so that at least if they do have to
evacuate the plane they will have a carton of Benson and Hedges and
a six-pack of Toblerone with which to await rescue. The sick bag is
there and hopefully has been changed rather than used and folded
away (yes…..that happened to me too!) the plane has taken off and
‘hallelujah’ the crossword puzzle hasn’t been done in the in-flight
magazine. Just when I think I can relax and everything is hunky dory
I remember my cell phone is still on in my back pocket and have to
stand up again to fish it out. Bloody hell….now one end of the lap
belt has burrowed down the crack in the seat cushions like a
homesick mole and the cabin steward is headed my way.
My wife tells me that I’m anal-retentive over my cell phone habits
and claims that every person on every fully loaded commercial flight
taking off all over the world can’t possibly have remembered to
switch off their cell phone and by the law of averages if it was
really likely to cause the plane’s autopilot to switch off (and
therefore necessitate waking up the driver) there would be frequent
showers of aircraft debris and overpriced duty free items falling
from the sky…..she reckons the risk is fairly small. Reluctantly I
must agree until my fears are supported by the discovery by
anthropologists of several isolated pockets of hitherto unknown
humanity all linked by the common culture of chain smoking filter
tipped cigarettes, eating Swiss chocolate and praying to the
benevolent god who provides these and the comfortable if slightly
battered chairs they all own.
I like gadgets (they don’t like me, no not a bit! They wage android
war against me, but I soldier on like a man whose dog bites him
every morning.). I have a PDA (Personal Demonic Ambassador) which in
addition to making telephone calls and sending enough microwave
radiation through my trouser gusset to be considered a family
planning device, acts as a diary, calendar, notepad, address book
and camera. Indeed I have several very good close-up photographs of
my ear on file which I would be happy to share with you if I could
figure out how to pair with your Bluetooth device. My PDA has a
function called Flight Mode, which (as I discovered after some
futile experiments in levitation) means that the cell phone bit gets
turned off but you can still access the computery bits like your
appointments schedule, AGM minutes and most importantly Solitaire.
I religiously remember to put the thing in Flight Mode as I leave
the departure lounge to board a plane I also retrieve the SIM card
for the country I am headed to from the Ziploc bag in my wallet
where I keep SIM cards and install it in the phone in readiness for
the very important call that will no doubt come in the arrivals hall
at the other end (……..maybe my wife has a point). I am then free to
play Solitaire rather than read the pointless drivel that you find
in in-flight magazines; or would be if I was not being wrestled to
the floor of the plane by overzealous flight attendants telling me
to switch my phone off. “It’s in Flight Mode!!” I try to shout
through the ranger choke hold the purser has on my throat. “Release
me from this World Wrestling Federation scissor press and I will
show you……and please stop the other passengers from kicking me…I
mean you no harm” I implore them. But they never believe me so off
it jolly well goes.
Here’s an interesting fact I discovered earlier today whilst
wondering how many air travellers, like me, approach the leviathan
beast sitting on the runway preparing for the enormous everyday act
of faith required to board a Jumbo without really understanding how
loaded with over 500 souls and all their Toblerones and B&H to the
tune of 412,775 kg, the thing actually gets up in the air and stays
there (cell phones permitting) until you get to the other end.
 Like
most one time school-kids I remember the whole thing depends on the
Bernoulli Theory which describes very neatly how air passing over a
wing travels faster over the upper surface than the lower surface
(because for some reason the air molecules have agreed to meet up at
the same time at the wing’s trailing edge) resulting in a reduction
in pressure on the wing’s upper surface….hey presto…this creates
lift! But I Googled it and the first article I got to told me that
“The Bernoulli Theory is Balony!” This is disturbing to me…more-so
than it was this morning at an altitude of 35 cm above my office
floor, since I am now writing this on a plane having defied the
steely-eyed stare of the cabin steward who removed my phone from me
earlier.
However fear not as it turns out that the Bernoulli Theory is
only the most easily explained contributory factor to the theory of
flight and thus the perfect information equivalent of over
processed and easily digested junk-food (polony) to feed to
inquisitive children who are being dragged screaming up the steps of
an aeroplane. The web page which explains in layman’s terms all the
forces that actually do keep your aeroplane up in the sky is
too mind-numbingly tedious to be reproduced here but suffice to say
that the forces are complex and so myriad in number that they cannot
possibly have been discovered through reason but only through a
version of the evolutionary process, which as we all know leaves a
trail of fallen “unfit” individuals in its wake.
Thus the fact that I can be confident enough to sit in my seat and
eat a packet of crisps with nothing more substantial than air
pollution beneath me, is not so much an act of Faith as a decision
based on the hard evidence that hundreds of thousands of people have
safely done it before me (flown in aeroplanes …..rather than survive
eating crisps). Faith requires more gumption and should be stored up
for things like religion and not wasted on an everyday phenomenon
like flight. If the vast majority of people who had died returned
after a couple of weeks with healthy suntans, garish new shirts
(that they would never wear again) and a load of fags and
chocolates, then atheism wouldn’t exist would it? So having
established that the many forces that are keeping me up in the air
were discovered by trial and error, let’s raise our plastic beakers
to the pioneers who made it possible. The ones who survived are well
known and the Wright brothers will be forever remembered for their
success. Larry Walters the deckchair helium hot air balloonist is my
personal favourite
http://www.darwinawards.com/. Others were less fortunate,
Otto Lilienthal and Samuel Langley were two of the foundered
founding fathers of flight who paid the ultimate price (like Elvis)
for their obsessive need to get higher. Many others added to the
store of knowledge. The first brave test pilots were sent up in
Montgolfier’s famous hot air balloon to a height of 6000 feet. They
were a duck, a chicken and a sheep (the latter presumably less
comfortable with the attempt than former two, who already had some
experience with flying). They are perhaps best remembered not for
their contribution to flight but for spawning a whole new class of
joke. If Douglas Adams’ definition of flying is remembered correctly
as being the art of “throwing oneself at the ground and missing”
then a notable failure was 61 year old Robert Cocking who in 1817
fatally tested his 250 lb prototype conical parachute from a balloon
at 5000 ft. It has been hypothesised that the apparatus might have
worked, but for the extra weight of the prototype duty free cart.
Heroes of aviation we salute you!
Oh God was that my cell phone ringing?….we’re all going to die!!
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December
2006