My Dad's Swallow Doretti

File this under family/nostalgia. Here’s a really gritty scan of a slide from the late 1970s, showing my Dad’s Swallow Doretti and my mom in front of what appears to be, maybe, the Coast Range west of Portland. According to Wikipedia, only 276 Swallow Dorettis were ever produced, in 1954-55. The car is built on the Triumph TR2 platform. I don’t know what ever became of it.

I’m afraid if I start replying to this, my answer might get quite long. But I will do my best.

I am recovering from a life-crippling, encompassing, visceral fear of flying that I had for about 20 years. It was so bad that I once took a boat from NY to the UK. I had recurring nightmares. Even scenes in movies shot inside airliner cabins could spur a panic attack.

Toward the end of my ordeal I felt like I had tried everything. Prescription drugs, shrinks, various courses, books, audio recordings.

First, I want to tell you, there is no single light switch you can throw to get over your fear, rational or irrational. I tend to be wary of programs that advertise guaranteed results or that they are the magic bullet.

What’s My Point?

Getting through the kind of fear of flying I had is not a quick affair. I tried many things before I was successful. But here’s the good news: I did overcome it. And the mix I think is the key? Commitment, patience, focus and practice, using many tools.

When my husband first read this post, he suggested I might want to edit it to make it not sound like working on a fear of flying is a monumental undertaking. But the thing is, it is. If you’ve got minor nervousness, you are not my audience. I’m talking about a fear that makes any element of air travel, even the notion of it, terrifying.

So, I might chase some folks off. But if you really want to overcome your fear, here’s my point: it is work. But it may also free you like nothing else. And if any of my rambling notes can help you in any small way, I consider myself successful.

Steps To Consider

1. Identifying the sources and triggers of the fear; self-reflection. Why are you afraid of flying? What parts of the experience terrify you? Noises? Acceleration? The feeling of being unsupported in the air? The feeling of turbulence? Social anxieties like freaking out in front of other passengers? The feeling of “no return” when the cabin door closes? This is the piece of the phobia that some people find success in exploring with a counselor or other mental health professional. In my case, I was able to work through it on my own, but it took immense commitment and concentration. I found that writing in a journal and taking some time to think, deeply, alone, was very helpful in this step.
2. Gathering information and building your support arsenal. This is the hole that certain types of courses, books or audio books can really help out with. It’s important to know that the fear is not rational, and that this step on its own will NOT cure you. But an understanding of aviation physics, the way the industry sort of works, what to expect from certain aircraft–it can be useful later when you’re applying some of your other tactics.Based on the things that I discovered, through self-reflection, were the scariest for me, I started gathering my tools. This involves broader-reaching things like meditation audio books, or Web sites that focus on aviation or fear of flying. It might mean involving a close friend or relative who can support you. I’ll list some Web sites, books and courses that I found useful in this step in a bit.

   A certain amount of prescription anti-anxiety medication makes sense for some people, but not all. It’s controversial. Some fear of flying programs rail against any chemical crutches. A lot of them—for good reason—make loud noises about how dangerous it is to combine these anti-anxiety drugs with alcohol, and the drugs can be very addictive for some people. A very low dose of a drug in the benzodiazepene family is part of my toolset, but it is absolutely not a primary tool.

3. Looking at the bigger picture; finding meaning and motivation. For me, an anxious reaction was not limited to flying. I’m an anxious person! Finding some relaxation techniques and lifestyle changes really helped me in this area. Examples are yoga, breathing exercises, spirituality or meditation.Why do you want to get over your fear of flying? What is really driving you to work on this fear? Is it important to you? For me, it was my true love of travel and exploring amazing new places. But being able to feel that strongly enough to face my terror took patience and focus.
4. Planning your attack. Figure out how you can face this thing down. Schedule it out if that works for you (I like schedules and to-do lists, at least to a certain extent). I scheduled, quite literally, a full hour per day over the course of a few months, solely to work on this issue. During this time, I’d use items in my support arsenal, I’d visit Web sites and supportive chat forums, I’d read books about airplanes, I’d meditate, I’d write down my thoughts and concerns. Finally, I built up the courage to book my first flight. I prioritized the things that really scare me about flying, and then tried to find a flight that was the most appropriate. The idea of flying at night or in bad weather or a small plane really freaked me out, so my first flight was PDX -> LAS (Portland, Ore., to Las Vegas, Nev.) during a summer day. I also made sure to get a window seat and also treated myself to first class. The idea with my first flight was to remove as many stressors as possible while still making sure I was taking a huge step.
5. Taking small steps; staying committed. One of the hardest things for me about desensitizing myself to flying was that I saw it as one, monolithic thing. Either I was on the plane or I wasn’t, right? But I did find some things that really, honestly helped, but they required commitment, repetition and dedication. I started hanging out in the local airport, just outside security, listening to flight announcements and boarding calls. I practiced relaxation techniques there. I spent a lot of time on airliners.net, looking at the interiors of Alaska Airlines 737 aircraft, to become more comfortable with them. I watched home videos people shot on airplanes, watching them look calm and comfortable. I spent a lot of time looking at stuff that started to convince me, slowly, of the everyday nature of commercial airline travel.
6. Knowing what to expect. Accept and love that this fear is not rational. But neither are many of the important things in life, like love or beauty. Let go of judging yourself for it. I used to beat myself up a lot. I let that go. If possible, find a certain beauty IN your fear. Embrace it and get to know it. This is difficult. Being afraid is okay. Also know that your first flight will not necessarily be easy. Nor will it necessarily be terrible. And that one flight will not cure you. And that it will continue to get better, with ups and downs.Not every approach will be successful, either. I feel that is unlikely that any one single approach could work on its own, solo. It’s a combination of tools, commitment and practice.
7. Finding the final key. This is the part I probably can’t advise to. I think it’s different for everyone. I will tell you what ultimately got me on a plane. Two things, actually. One: the excitement of being able to travel with my husband, and the thrill of making it a surprise for him. I concocted an involved treasure hunt for him using my personal Web site. I involved a few select friends and relatives. My first trip, to Las Vegas, was a total surprise to him. At the end of the treasure hunt–which I triggered upon landing in Las Vegas–he found a plane ticket for himself, for the following day. Two: Something finally happened from all of my focus and determination. I started believing that planes going from point A to point B simply were *going to get there*. This sounds fundamental, basic. But it’s one of those things our rational side gets, but our irrational side rejects. Somewhere in my progress my irrational mind started believing it. I knew that the plane going from PDX to LAS was going to leave PDX and land uneventfully in LAS. It always has. The choice left to me was whether I wanted to be on that plane. I knew parts of it would be scary. But I also knew that the plane was going to arrive safely, just fine.
8. Persistance, practice: Don’t give up. Keep trying. Don’t feed the fear by canceling trips at the last moment (that rush of relief you feel that you don’t have to get on a plane? It’s just going to make it worse in the end). Believe and know that anything you imagine will happen, won’t. Keep flying, keep flying. Start knocking down the other elements that freak you out: night flying, an aisle seats, longer flights, turboprops, flying with other people, flying a multi-leg journey. You’ll start watching a magical thing happening: your brain will start to re-program its responses to certain, previously fear-inducing, stimuli. I now like airports. I find the cabin layouts of certain 737 configurations “cute.” The things I see through an airplane window are amazing things I could never see from any other vantage point.I “practice” every day. I’ve become excited by frequent flier programs (though I am seriously ignorant of them), and sometimes read the forum at flyertalk.com. I maintain an aviation-related Twitter user list. I read blogs written by flight attendants. I get very, very excited about packing efficiently. These are all manifestations of my commitment to get better and better. I’m still afraid of flying at night; I don’t know what I would do if I had to get on a flight quickly and didn’t have time for “preparing” myself. But I’m working on each and every one of these bits of fear: it’s like excising a persistent tumor. It feels so good to have almost all of it gone.

   I took my first flight just over a year ago. Since then, I have experienced 23 or 24 takeoffs and landings. I just got back from an epic, monthlong trip to Europe (Iceland, Ireland, France, the UK) during which I flew 7 times. It is not always easy. But it is exhilarating, amazing. Good luck, and bon voyage.

Tools

Here are some links to some lists of fear of flying books and programs that helped me:

http://www.lyza.com/2009/07/06/fear-of-flying-books-and-audiobooks-to-help-you/
http://www.lyza.com/2009/06/30/fear-of-flying-web-sites-resources-to-help-you/

It may be a bit difficult to follow, but here is the treasure hunt of my first flight (in reverse chronological order):
http://www.lyza.com/category/transformative-treasure-hunt/

And, finally, a collection of photos from my most recent trip, made possible by my steps to conquer my fear:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lyza/sets/72157624025407081/

Through all of this, I haven’t technically answered your question, which was about UK-based fear of fying courses. If you can find an appropriate one, I do encourage you to take it (perhaps someone based in the UK can chime in). I hope I don’t just seem insane for writing all of this, but my heart goes out to those who are afraid of flying, and I want to, in some tiny way, help.

The third in a series of novels following the adventures and misadventures of Morrie Morris, Ivan Doig’s newest yarn maintains his hallmark breezy, historically-rich Western style, even if the payoff isn’t terribly memorable.

Morris stumbles into Butte, Montana, in its post-WWI heyday, trying to escape the shadows of his past. He lodges in a boarding house run by the smart-talking, tough, and handsome widow Grace Faraday. Her perspective, like those of nearly all of Butte’s residents, is framed by a singular, larger-than-life corporate hydra: the Anaconda Company, which spearheaded the mining operations on the ‘world’s richest hill’ of copper. The mining men and miner’s wives, the cafes and mouthpiece newspaper—it’s like the town of Butte exists as a support network for the the juggernaut mining company.

Morris’ first employment attempt in Butte results in a farcical stint working for a local mortuary. This translates into surreal whisky-fueled all-nighters at wakes in the Irish part of town and provides Doig a good opportunity to introduce us to some foreshadowing in the shapes of several hardened but goodhearted union organizers. The whole funerary thing mercifully over, Morris moves on to a more plausible employment: at the library, under the blazing eye of Sam Sandison, who is, according to some local residents, possibly the devil.

Cue some blasts from the past. This is, recall, the third book in a series. There’s the chipper former student who provides spunk and, well, that’s about it, though she is conveniently married to the (darkening clouds of uh-oh!) head union agitator. There’s also Morris’ inability to escape his weird, gambling fraud past–they always seem to find him, even if this is the 1910s in rural Montana.

But never mind that. That feels like necessary housekeeping. What’s fun are the new ideas and people. ‘Work Song’ feels comfortable in its own skin. Doig is inventive (but not too inventive), his characters quirky (but not exasperatingly quirky). Combine Doig’s training as a historian and his command of the anecdotal, and it can be occasionally uncanny just how lolling and self-confident the narrative can be.

Sometimes the story wanders too far into a mineshaft, sometimes it holds a singular note about workers’ rights just a bit too long. Sometimes Doig’s earnest attention to tying into the previous novels wears thin. Where Doig shines in Work Song is in illuminating new ideas and folks: the real-life empire of the Anaconda mining company, the mercurial eruptions of Sam Sandison, a wiggly youth they call Russian Famine, a quick look into early 20th-century slang. It almost seems like he needs to set himself free of the shackles of a continuing series, and give us what he does best: gorgeous glimpses into the landscapes and humanity of the American West.

LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program

My many thanks again to LibraryThing for their Early Reviewer program, as well as Riverhead Books. Work Song was released in the United States on June 29, 2010.

Work Song by Ivan Doig

Buy the books mentioned in this post from Amazon.com now and help me maintain my rock 'n roll lifestyle.

Jacob de Zoet, a straight-laced, naive and hopelessly optimistic young clerk, arrives, charged with visions of making honest men out of the smugglers, clockwork clarity out of a mess of cooked books. This of course is an immediate recipe for farce; de Zoet is about as popular as a fart. What he does accomplish, almost immediately, is falling for Orito Abigawa, the winsome (if facially scarred) daughter of a local gentleman. Orito is graceful, elusive, and somewhat implausibly educated in the nascent medical arts. Her studies of early anatomical texts and medical tomes, guided in part by a riotous, crotchety doctor stationed at Dejima, serve as an excuse for her passable knowledge of Dutch. de Zoet and Orito can, at least, converse.

Things start going (predictably) badly. de Zoet makes inevitable enemies, Orito disappears. An earthquake. The East India Company men while away the non-trading season ominously, drunkenly, hurling various abuses at their motley group of slaves. The shogun starts clamping down on trading and tributes.

Interactions on Dejima, whiz-bang linguistic mashups of formal Japanese from inflexible state translators; rough-and-tumble, sea-salted Dutch vernacular; Indonesian pidgins;—these seem convoluted, yet they’re so plausible that for a while we forget this is fiction. The man-made island reverberates with drama, feels like a stage set, even comes with a sketched, maplike overview nominally penned by de Zoet himself.

On Dejima, there is a slight surreal quality to the tininess of the space, the prison-like existence. But the story is solid and present, with none of Mitchell’s hallmark, Murakami-evoking magical twists. The Thousand Autumns is not as dreamy-sweet as his novel Black Swan Green but does have its woozy moments. And then there is the dark mountaintop fortress-abbey where ninjas lurk on crags, a supernatural cat wanders around, and some Very Bad Things are going on. It’s there that things start getting peculiar.

Mitchell’s past creativity with structure, like the nested, folded-in-on-itself triumph, Cloud Atlas, has left him open to accusations that he avoids serious writing by using the literary equivalent of smoke and mirrors. Lest you think that Mitchell is hiding behind novelty, The Thousand Autumns is stripped clean; it is a novel so true to form that it evokes a certain 19th-century nostalgia. Maybe we are reading Tolstoy. That is how it seems sometimes, with its straightforward, non-fidgety energy.

Sometimes this energy wanes just a notch. The novel doesn’t gallop; it has self confidence and doesn’t cut its scenes short. Think of it as the director’s cut, with specific pride around the dialogue’s subtleties. But neither does it thrash or go frantic. It has a gentle texture that beckons the reader on, even if the pace isn’t entirely on fire.

There’s the weirdness of the walled garden trading island of Nejima, the even deeper weirdness of the mountaintop abbey, the odd juxtaposition of Dutch and Japanese cultures. But all that is strictly irrelevant; the novel would stand on its own just for the nuanced relationship between de Zoet and Ogawa, de Zoet’s rival for Orito’s affection. Or the internal monologue of the gout-plagued, conflicted English captain who arrives to impose the distant British triumph over the Dutch. Or the wicked Abbot Enomoto’s tireless machinations.

This is Mitchell coming into his prime, still able to wield the weird, but comfortable enough in his milieu to start framing up some serious, timeless literature.

LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program

My many thanks again to LibraryThing for their Early Reviewer program, as well as Random House. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet will be released in the United States on June 29, 2010.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell

Buy the books mentioned in this post from Amazon.com now and help me maintain my rock 'n roll lifestyle.

Sunset near La Grande Maison

Sunset over ripening wheat fields near La Grande Maison, a several-hundred-year-old fortified house converted into a bed and breakfast. This is in the Loire Valley, somewhat near Saumur, France. More photos to come from the trip as I catch my breath upon returning to Portland.

75 Seconds at Gullfoss

Though Iceland has about eighty-seven thousand hundred waterfalls–enough that you glaze over at a certain point–Gullfoss is the tourist heavyweight. It’s impressive and huge. But everyone photographs it and comes away with the same general shots. I thought I’d try my 9-stop neutral density filter. This was taken in broad daylight and is a 75-second exposure.

Blowing ash over southern Icelandic landscape

The Icelandic volcano story now is not of blustery explosion but of a beautiful desolation caused by veritable storm fronts of billowing ash. Ash everywhere. In my socks. In David’s eyes. In the air filter of our rental car. Black and deceptively gorgeous, the ash, when airborne, brought visibility on roads down to near zero and is going to make me blow black snot for some time to come.

Greenland

Flying over Greenland on a fight to Europe: not unusual. Not unusual, even, to see curious, remote, ice-scarred landscapes. But I was looking at this scene through my three windows in seat 2F (I’m convinced: best seat on the entire plane, an IcelandAir 757W) for some time before something made my scalp feel kind of funny.

It never got dark on our flight. We skirted the very edge of the curved track of sunlight across the planet. These mountains slipped below us at a time difficult to pinpoint, but it must have been something around three in the morning locally. OK, so picture this.

I was sitting on the starboard side of a plane flying roughly east. Thus, I was looking out of a window on the right side of the aircraft: looking south. Note the direction of the shadows! I’d been awake a long time and I was confused and time was loopy, but I was pretty sure of the various cardinal directions. The sun was coming from the north. How could that be?

David, slumming it back in 17F, was noticing the same thing. He was busy discussing the vagaries of BitTorrent with his young, Norwegian seatmates. One of them, Wilhelm (the first Wilhelm I’ve ever heard of who wasn’t also a Kaiser), was taking five iPads back to the mother country. They were all spellbound.

Later, David and I put our heads together and figured it out. We were far enough north that the sun, on the other side of the planet, was spilling over the top of the North Pole.

Everything has started lopsided, with the little tragedies and surges that underly the best and the worst journeys we take. Is David’s lost wallet an Ill omen or a charm?

David doesn’t lose wallets.

But his is most certainly missing, and now he is missing; I am sitting in Union Station in downtown Portland and we have already missed the train. I am sitting with my back to the platform because it is empty anyway on a bench like a pew made of a lot of wood. The floors and walls a stone, maybe sandstone or limestone, beige and polished. It has always looked the same in here.

I have no real idea of what is happening, which makes the vaulted archaic echo of the station all the more appropriate. Not wanting any dead weight for Europe, I switched off my iPhone and put it in a drawer. No one can call me to tell me what is happening. So maybe it is like waiting for a telegram or waiting for a horse to come with fresh news (maybe two weeks stale?) from the city. The frosted glass and oak in this place, the echoes, makes this feel appropriate.

The first thing that happens on our trip is that I ask David for something simple: $1.50 for a corn dog in the station’s food stand. I don’t usually eat corn dogs and I haven’t really been eating at all for the past several days–a hot and clenching nervous anxiety keeps me away from food. A corn dog. David fishes in his pocket for cash for my corn dog but comes up with a grimace and a realization: wallet gone.

He disappears, to find a cab. The gate attendants flirt with me and are helpful, maybe too helpful. The train leaves and when one of the employees loans me a phone (I didn’t even ask! Such industriousness!) and David is still stuck in traffic on the Broadway Bridge with a feckless, useless cabbie.

The train has left.

Sicilian chocolate in the Portland Union Station first/sleeper lounge

Solo and empowered, I just bought tickets for us for the next train, 90 minutes hence. The fare was much higher. Another fifteen dollars, the ticket agent says, and we can have a private room, with dinner.

The decision was not hard to make.

View of the platform

Union Station

Northbound Amtrak #14 coast starlight, pacific lounge car, wine tasting

Our "Roomette"

Wine tasting, led by Carmella, a Los Angelino who is giving us trick question trivia to win a glass of wine. I know some of the answers a bit too well and the others annoy me. But still, three nearly full glasses of crap wine and a plastic wood colored bowl full of cheese cubes seems like a mighty fierce deal for $5. Especially with the scenery (green and Columbian) and Carmella’s exasperation at our horrible guessing– we all get free wine. She hates us all and likes us a bit too.

David in the "Roomette"

The Columbia Crest shiraz is apparently good with the goat cheese that everyone already finished. Clamoring for more goat cheese to no avail.  

–

My father lives in Bellevue, Wash. Across the street he lives on–Lake Washington Blvd.–are the $3-8million mansions on the waterfront. His is a tiny cabin, former servants’ quarters. The neighbor’s chickens wander and coo. It’s adorable. He left us plenty of food for breakfast:

Breakfast Lox!

Accomplishing this meant curing myself of a weight (and size) problem. My background is road travel. To wit, I was hobbled by a phenomenal fear of flying until just about a year ago. Cross-country travel in a vehicle imposes few restrictions on baggage, and it made me sloppy. Over the past twelve months (and 17 flights), I’ve kept an eye on what was working and what wasn’t, and have emerged an enlightened being, in more ways than one.

I don’t know if my REI “Tech Beast” rolling luggage is critically acclaimed, but I love the thing. Handles everywhere, rugged, rolls like a dream on nearly any surface. And carry-on friendly.

This is everything I'm taking to Europe for a month.

Here’s what’s in the bags:

• 5 fitted layering T-shirts
• 1 Lacoste Polo
• 1 pair Puma Fast Cats (sneakers)
• 1 pair of what my sister would call “Spiffy-cas[ual]” flats (they’re Børn, if you must know; I got them at REI)
• 2 sweaters
• 1 cropped cardigan sweater
• 1 full-on, zip-up fleece
• 3 sleeveless shirts (mostly for going out/the hotness)
• 3 layering, long-sleeved shirts
• 2 skirts (one ruched silk designer-y one; one casual melon-colored number)
• 1 pair leggings
• 2 pairs jeans
• 1 pair light cotton “travel pants” (think cargo pants light; lots of pockets but not so bulky)
• 1 pair black capris
• 1 pair Marc Jacobs tasty black pants
• 1 pair pajama bottoms
• 1 hat
• 1 North Face down jacket (in a compression sack)
• 1 swim suit (one-piece; keeping it classy)
• An undisclosed number of dainties
• 6 pairs socks
• 1 pair gloves
• 1 15″ MacBook Pro laptop
• 1 iPad
• 1 Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera body
• 1 50mm lens
• 1 17-40mm lens
• 1 100-300mm lens
• 1 kick-ass compact (but full-height!) travel tripod (Sunpak!)
• Sundry filters (including my new 9-stop neutral density miracle; more on that, I hope, in another post), tripod mount plates, accessories
• 1 Luma Loop
• 1 pair Audio Technica (good but bulky) noise-canceling headphones
• 2 (two!) small Coach purses
• AC adapter for my laptop, camera charger
• Cables galore
• An entire pharmacy. I have Crohn’s Disease, and as such am traveling with seven (7) prescriptions, including one that comes in, like, a pint-sized bottle. All are in their original bottles (grr) for customs. Yeah, I have a doctor’s note.
• Full complement of toiletries

Most of this was accomplished by using the “rolling” technique explained by Poole in the New York Times.

Challenges

My photography inclination was the place where I splurged here, as well as succumbing to the (business-driven) need to bring my laptop and not just my iPad. Side note: I tend to shy away from evangelizing Apple hardware, but the iPad is the single best travel device I have ever had. Reality forces me to travel with a lot of drugs, so I had to work around that.

Left Behind

I have this black Galliano dress I’m quite fond of, but it’s heavy and bulky. Ditched. I also lost sleep about whether I should bring hiking boots. Iceland. Moist. Outdoors. Yes. Us: adventurers, yes. But still. I couldn’t fathom wearing my monumental boots on a plane across the Atlantic. Ditched. There is this fantastically Nordic sweater that Aileen gave me that is warm enough to wear as outerwear. But it is also the size of a Corgi when it is folded.

I’ll be wearing a third pair of shoes, a third pair of jeans, a sweater and a light jacket onto the plane. By the way: first class, bitches!*

* Well, Saga class on an Icelandair flight SEA -> REK.