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After the airplane crash landed in San Francisco, my roommate reassured me that I had nothing to worry about for my first airplane trip that I’m taking on my birthday next month. Southwest Airlines flies the older Boeing 737 airplanes that are more reliable than the newer Boeing 777 airplane that crashed. And then a Southwest Airlines 737 crash landed at LaGuardia Airport after the nose gear collapsed and the airplane skidded to a halt on the runway.

Nothing to worry about.

As a child growing up in the 1970’s, it seemed like an airplane either crashing or being hijacked by terrorists every other week. Flying on an airplane got added to a long list of things that I would never do. Something I avoided for many years by never going anywhere far enough from Silicon Valley that couldn’t be reached by car.

As I got older in life, the list of things that I would never do got shorter. If I could get my driver license at the tender young age of 37, perhaps I could take an airplane to Las Vegas on my 44th birthday. That the Las Vegas Star Trek convention is taking place the same week I’ll be there is purely coincidental. Considering how much I paid for this trip over the last six months, not going isn’t an option.

I still need to get used to the idea of hurling through the sky in a cigar-shaped coffin, but these crashes aren’t helping that much. I’ll probably end up like William Shatner in The Twilight Zone TV episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” being carried out on a stretcher after losing it on the airplane.