Flying and heights...

I like the idea of flying. 

However, having developed a fear of heights over the last decade or so, I can no longer walk out to the edge of an anywhere too far above ground. I don't think I had it as a kid, but it came upon me when I was about fifty, and I suddenly realised that there was this small problem.

It has happened a few times we've been away, and on one trip to Tasmania, I walked back along Cataract Gorge in Launceston, whilst my wife caught the chairlift back to the car! 
It happened also in Hobart when we drove up Mt. Wellington, and I couldn't venture out on to the boardwalk. One other time was on a trip down in the south of Tassie, and there was this forest walk among the trees, called Tahune Forest Airwalk
I did it, but I couldn't go out to the end, and too much looking down is not good!

With flying, for me it is not so much the fact that you are up at 50,00 feet, but I just can't stand the bumps!!!
Luckily, we have had very few occasions where I have had to be really panicky, and our last long flights to and from the UK were sooooo smooth. On the way back from Singapore, we had 600km per hour tailwinds over the centre of Australia, and were fairly whizzing along.
As a consequence, this made our arrival too early into Sydney, and we had to circle around for a while, until we got clearance to land. Not quite what you want at the end of an already long flight!

The stupid thing is, I love sitting at a window and being able to peer down at the landscape below! Whilst in the US with my daughter twenty years ago, I had a window seat from Washington, D.C., all the way across America to Los Angeles, and just sat there and watched the whole continent pass below me. 

On one trip to NZ, I had some "calmer-downers" from my doctor, and didn't take them on the short flight to Sydney from Canberra, and it was, (and they have always been), one of the worst flights I've ever had.
(My neighbour tells me it's because the plane doesn't have enough time, on such a short journey, to get above the clouds, etc. So, by the time you're up, you have to start coming down again).
We changed to the larger plane to fly to Christchurch, and having taken my tablet, had one of the smoothest flights ever!! 

I couldn't do long flights without my wife with me. She is the calming one who holds my hand, and assures me everything will be OK!!  

We'll see how things go in March...