I hate planes.

When I was a kid, I used to dream about being a jet fighter pilot. Soaring over the clouds, and looking down upon a distant ground, detached from the problems that plagued my typical seven-year old existence. I would daydream about how wonderful it would be to be in the air, to live a free, careless life in the sky.

Of course, when I was a kid, I used to pick my nose, watch the shittiest inane cartoons, and I had a rat tail. I short, when I was younger, I was fucking retarded.

I once heard someone say that flying a plane consists of long periods of boredom, punctuated by brief moments of stark terror. I'm pretty sure whoever said that was a master of understatement. I was on a flight to the Interior on friday. And I learned that turbulence... sucks.

Actually, scratch that. Flying sucks.

Flight leaves at 9 am. But you're supposed to get there an hour early. So, I get there at about 7:30 or so, just to be safe. Flight to Vancouver takes a bit longer than planned, but that's okay. Then, it's supposed to be a quick wait in Vancouver. This "quick wait" takes a super long time, as the flight gets delayed. And then, delayed again. And then... delayed again.

Let's put it this way. My flight was delayed for an hour. So, I decided to wander around Vancouver Airport, poking around in the shops for a while. When I got back to my terminal, I found my flight's been delayed again. So, I decide to watch the first half of Role Models on my iPod. And laugh at the part about cup sizes, and think about Kittens.

At the end of that, I look up... flight's been delayed. Again.

Watch the last half of Role Models. And then fiddle on my iPod again. And then watch the first 20 minutes of it over, this time with closed captioning. I don't know why.

My flight, which was supposed to leave around 10:30, doesn't leave until almost 1 pm. Which is funny, because the NEXT flight to my destination leaves at 1 pm. And it was right on time.

And then there's the one hour flight, where I was told I can't sit at the front, because it will unbalance the plane. I look at the stewardess - er, flight attendant.

"Are you saying I'm fat?" I tease.

She kind of smiles, and asks me to politely move to the back of the plane, as if saying "hey, it's not my fault you weigh too much."

Seriously. Like a 150-pound ginger fuck like myself is going to make much of a difference if this plane starts going down. About the only difference would be that when I scream "Jesus Christ, why didn't I take the bus?" the stewardess, er, attendant, wouldn't be able to hear me, as my voice would be drowned out by screaming engines and the sound of flames licking at the exposed flesh of the overweight passengers.

So, they put me in the back.

Didn't stop the turbulence, though. "Turbulence" being pilot speak for "holy fuck, we're all going to die". Seriously. Are planes supposed to just drop about one hundred feet in two seconds? Is that normal?

The moral of the story? A 200$ trip to get me to the interior "much quicker than if I took a bus" took around 6 hours. If I had gone by bus (at around 80$, including ferry ride), it would have taken about 8.

And busses don't get turbulence.