Tempered temper

As anyone who knows me will attest, I'm not a patient person. At all. Yet, even though I'm usually fuming if I have to wait longer for the A train than the time it takes for three songs to play on my iPod, I'm unusually serene whenever I fly.

Witness Friday, when my flight was about three hours late taking off thanks to severe weather in Houston. Sure, my initial reaction was one of disgust -- just ask my ex, who had the misfortune of being on the phone with me as I saw the delay get posted on the board -- but it only took me a few minutes to cool down. I just enjoyed chatting with my fellow passengers, including one crazy, drunk woman who told me at least five times about her having to rush over to LaGuardia after her flight from JFK had been canceled.

Perhaps it's because -- thanks partially to my work -- I know that most delays are far out of the airlines' control. Or perhaps it's because I just love to travel, even if it's just for a few days to the place where I spent the first 20-some-odd years of my life. And perhaps my attitude would have been different if I, like some of my fellow passengers, had a connecting flight to catch. At any rate, a three-hour delay doesn't even crack the Top 5 of my worst flights ever. Those would be, in no particular order:

1) A horrifically overcrowded charter flight from Istanbul to JFK. It was one of those double-decker planes that takes about an hour and a half to just board. I was in the center of a row of about seven people for the flight that ended up lasting more than 13 hours, thanks to an unscheduled stop in Bangor, Maine, because we were running low on fuel. I barely missed what was supposed to have been an easy connection at JFK. Although I usually wouldn't have complained about spending the night in New York, when you've been out of the country for three weeks, you're just ready to get home.

2) A terrifying flight from Houston to Boston. About 20 minutes after getting the announcement that we'd be landing shortly, I looked out the window and noticed we were suddenly over Cape Cod. The captain then announced that we were circling because they weren't able to get the flaps on the wings up, but he was going to go ahead and try to land anyway. When we did land, the plane was going so fast I didn't think it would ever stop, and the firetrucks waiting for us didn't make me feel any better.

3) A Christmas Eve flight from Philadelphia to Houston via Atlanta. Actually, the flight itself wasn't bad. It was a little late, but that was to be expected, considering it was late at night on Christmas Eve. I even sat next to Santa Claus on one of the legs. What made it bad was the six inches of snow that the Texas coast was getting upon my arrival. Not only do Texans not know how to drive in the snow, but their roads are not prepared for that sort of weather, either. The 80-mile drive from the airport to my parents' house took six hours. I got in about 6 a.m. Christmas morning.

4) Yet another flight from Philadelphia to Houston. This time, we had to make an emergency landing in Lake Charles, La., because of a fuel problem. See, that's why I usually drove THROUGH Lake Charles.

5) A flight from Anchorage to Seattle when I was a kid. It was the roughest flight I've ever been on and the closest I've ever come to being airsick.

The best flight? That would be my return from Copenhagen a few years ago. As we were waiting in line to get our seat assignments, a particularly pushy couple behind us in line kept edging their suitcases to the front. When it was our turn to get to an agent, they darted in front of us. As it turned out, they nabbed the last available seats in coach, so we and everyone behind us in line got bumped up to first class. Aha! I think I just remembered the source of my patient attitude toward air travel.