'Close one there..'

We're down in Florida on vacation this week, at Marco Island, somewhere we've been coming for the past few years. It's a great getaway, but my problem is I hate to fly - my family won't let me sit with them on the plane anymore - and I particularly hate turbulence. The only way I can deal with it is to hold on to the seat in front for dear life and crank up my iPod. And it's no good listening to soothing stuff, I have to have something loud that rocks as the plane rolls.

So this week's Turbulence Playlist was: 'Master of Disaster' by John Hiatt; 'Sultans of Swing' and 'Tunnel of Love' by Dire Straits, 'American Girl' by The Goo Goo Dolls, 'My Old School' by Steely Dan and 'Rock and Roll' by Led Zeppelin. Just about 25 minutes back-to-back, and usually enough to get me through a bit of rough air.

We were on JetBlue out of JFK, usually a nice ride and efficient service. That's why this story is such a blast. Don't know about anyone else, but this just makes me want to fly JetBlue every single time.

And credit where it's due, whatever I might think of the Journal, they got the one awesome detail in the story that neither the New York Times (although the Times did win the prize for photos) nor NPR managed to snag.

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Everyone's got a good story and sometimes it comes completely out of the blue. The kids were going parasailing yesterday, so I was down on the beach and I got to talking with another couple of folks waiting for the boat.

Turned out they were from Michigan and when I mentioned that I'd lived in Ann Arbor for a year, she told me one of her late relatives had been a professor at the music school. She also said that he had helped develop the double-reed system for bassoon and later worked with the musical phenomenon that is Mannheim Steamroller (Chip Davis, the band's founder, graduated from Michigan in 1969).

When we were back at Michigan for stepdaughter's audition at the music school two years ago, there were probably more bassoons in one place than I'd ever seen. It was like a bassoon preserve. We still joke about it.

And speaking of bassoons, if you haven't seen this, it's really very cool: