She was beautiful, going to be an heiress to a major German brewery someday, rich, and I wanted to drive her dad’s VW van (something I never wanted to do before).

I was in love! Unfortunately although she was friendly enough she didn’t feel the same way about me.

But one morning I sat next to a middle-aged woman who told me nervously that she had never flown in a helicopter. I tried to be reassuring but things went wrong on takeoff. Standard practice was to lift up to about 10 feet or so and hover for a few seconds, to do one last check on all systems. Then the departure consisted of rapidly putting the nose down to get some forward speed, followed by a steep climb out. This was to avoid staying too long in the “coffin corner” where the copter is too low to auto-rotate in the event of loss of power, but still high enough off the deck that a crash could be fatal!

My fellow traveller told me she was quite comfortable flying in airplanes, but when the nose suddenly went DOWN instead of UP on takeoff, she figured we were going to die! She grabbed my arm so violently and tightly that it raised welts on my skin, even underneath a shirt and suit-coat! She also screamed loudly, but nobody else heard her but me, because the noise level in the cabin was quite high, especially at takeoff. After we landed in Victoria she told me she was changing her plans to take the ferry back to Vancouver!

Also for Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, who met on the Concorde.

I would guess that flying first class (or on the Concorde, when it used to fly) makes it easier for celebrities to meet each other on airplanes.

Let me know how it goes. If you want to let me know by email, that’s fine. I wonder if WordPress got your wires crossed with someone else. One suggestion I would make for next time you comment (and, as always, I welcome your comments) is to change your email address to something else. It can even be a fake email address. See if the avatar still comes up. If it doesn’t, you’ll know it’s somehow connected to your email address.

Geez, I mean, I don’t recall ever setting up an avatar for the email account I use here (this is the only blog I comment on, and when I comment on, say, a YouTube channel, it’s always with a Gmail account solely for that purpose).

And it’s not that I *mind* it – you understand. It’s just paranoia about anonymity and untraceability in this Age of Scalp-Hunting and Blacklisting Conservatives.

I’ll try to figure out what’s causing it to show up. Thanks for the feedback.

And P.S. to Richard – that’s an amazing story. I’d find it contrived if I saw it in a movie, but you know how the saying goes: truth is stranger than fiction.