Aruba Trip Part One

There I was........sitting at Gate D22 at Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall Sheila Dixon Rawlings Blake O'Malley Mikulski Obama International Airport in Baltimore......waiting to board our plane. We would be flying off via USAirways to the island of Aruba......but we would have to change planes in Charlotte. I got my Ravens cap on and ready to go.

I wasn't alone on this trip.....of course Supernurse was with me.......along with about 45 others as part of the Chesapeake Medical Staffing group. We were the first batch to head off to Aruba.......four days later the rest of the group would join us. All in all, there were a total of 89 assorted nursing professionals with spouses and friends on this trip. It is always a pleasure to travel with this group of people.

So we boarded the plane, changed planes in Charlotte, and we were off to Aruba.....it's a fairly long flight. We all get situated on the plane and all in all, everything was good.......except for two very odd things.

First odd thing............

.........no........Robin Williams was not on this flight.......BUT.......there was this flight steward to looked and acted eerily like Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man. Same robotic movements, same smile, same walk, same blank stare. Downright scary. I wonder if this guy knows how he appears.

This was was I saw from my seat........as you can see........there he is, sitting there.

Here is a little closer look. I apologize for the lack of clarity in the picture........but surely you can see the resemblance.


Okay........now that was the first odd thing.

If you have never been in an airplane......this is what I could see as we were ascending. Looking down, everything kept getting smaller and smaller.

Up and up until we were above the clouds.............it is amazing.......and it gives you a view of things from a different perspective.

Once we level off.....we are so high up that it seems that if we went any further up we would be in space. Yes, you can see the curvature of the earth at this point.

Now the Second Odd Thing.............

It isn't odd that some people take their laptop computers with them on trips........but what was odd was what I saw on the laptop between the seats in front of me. Can you see what that is?

Have another look...................that's right......

..........it was the cockpit of a plane......much like the cockpit of the very plane that we were on......and it was on a laptop. Okay, okay......so there are games for computers and there are even flight simulators as well......no big deal.........BUT............

........that wasn't all that was on that laptop................I couldn't help but read what was on the screen.............holy smoke!..........it appears to be some serious technical questions about controlling a plane.

Indeed..........it was some sort of program from Oxford Aviation Training..........in this day and age, stuff like this gets my attention in a big way. There were two men in the seats in front of me.........both had reasonably dark skin.......I could not tell whether or not they were Arab, Aruban, or Hispanic.......and they spoke in a foreign language............and one of them came across as if he was in charge of the other. The other seemed younger and was extremely jittery in that he couldn't seem to sit still. And he kept looking over the back of his seat at me. I didn't like this at all........this kind of stuff makes for an uncomfortable flight......how does one relax seeing this stuff?

I kept an eye on these guys while Supernurse slept. I sat there thinking about various scenarios.....what if these guys were terrorists and started to do something?.......I knew I most assuredly would not be able to count on any help from Bicentennial Man, the flight steward. I pointed out the two to some of the others sitting nearby.........they would watch them too. And that one guy kept looking back at me and grinning.............and I kept staring right into his face to let him know that at least Signtopia would be in his shit if he tried anything. Who knows what he was doing on this flight?......I surely didn't.........and I wouldn't have trusted them regardless of how innocent their purpose really was. They were whipping out 100 dollar bills to pay for snacks and wine and being sarcastic with the female flight attendant. The attendant didn't seem to notice what I had.

So what to do about this situation.............I was thinking........if something was going to happen, I am on it.........then again, if it could be prevented maybe I should step up to the plate and say something to someone in charge and have them deal with it............then again, if it was all much ado about nothing, then I would be the cause of delaying this trip because surely, the pilot would want to land somewhere and the nearest place at this point was Miami........I would open a whole can of worms......................what would you do?

So what I did was nothing.........I just kept an eye on them. I opted to believe that these were just some morons that had been attending a flight school, probably in Charlotte.....who knows?....and were reviewing their tests.............then again, I couldn't help but remember about some of the facts about those terrorists that brought down two planes on 9/11. They were young too. They also had participated in some flight training at a school in the US. This was all not only odd, but very uncomfortable.

I looked out of the window......at this point we had gone far enough over open water that I could see an island................we must be getting closer to Aruba at this point...............nothing has happened so far and I thought........if they were planning any nefarious stuff for this flight it would have happened while in US territory.

So......nothing happened.........and we landed in Aruba about an hour later...........and I could finally relax.

Our group of people stood outside of the Aruba airport and prepared to board the two buses that would take us to the resort. This party was getting started.

Me and Supernurse on the bus..................go ahead.......ask me if I am tired and just a little stressed.

The infamous Aruban police................halfway into our vacation, I would discover firsthand, how inept these folks can be. It does not surprise me now that Natalee Holloway was never found and those responsible for her disappearance just danced with the authorities. More on that later.

Here we go.............

............to be continued.........