Precious

I have returned to my temporary student home in Provo, Utah and it was no easy task. I was trying to think of times in my life when I have been scared. Not just sort of scared but really really scared and this is what I came up with:
1) Camping- I heard scratching outside of my tent and could not wake up my tentmates, the scratching was not made by something small.
2) Motorcycle- My dad took me for a ride up the Kern Canyon on his Honda CBR 1100 and the wind was blowing really hard. Some gusts were hard enough to push us into the next lane.
3) In Hawaii- I went shopping in Waikiki by myself at night and thought I had missed the last bus back to North Shore and a scary man was trying to get me to come home with him.
But none of those events compare to the level of fear I had last night on the plane coming home. The pilot announced we would begin our descent shortly and that it was currently raining in Salt Lake. Then as we got nearer to the airport, the plane shifted directions and the pilot announced we were in a holding pattern and could not land because they had closed the airport to all incoming flights due to weather. I will compare my levels of fear with the levels in the Homeland Security Advisory System. In normal everyday life I am at a green, or low fear level. In potentially dangerous everyday situations such as driving in heavy traffic or snow I would be at a blue level, or guarded level of fear. In situations that are notorious for fear such as flying or rock climbing, the default level of fear would be yellow or elevated fear. At this point of the flight, I believe every passengers level of fear jumped to orange, or high fear. As we began to circle, the weather that was causing our delay became visible out of our plane window. We were circling an enormous electrical storm. Flashes of lightning were almost nonstop and every one was clearly visible. Of course my mind started to play the worst-case scenario game and I was sure one of those bolts would strike our plane and we would be vaporized or the fuel tanks would explode but the kind lady next to me, who seemed fearless, sensed my terror and began talking to me about her daughters and the drama of buying her youngest daughter a new wet suit for her birthday and her oldest daughter changing majors 4 times and her other daughter learning Spanish while doing research in Costa Rica and Spain. Her endless chatter was helping a little but all I could think of was that I still haven't surfed a short board, been to Costa Rica or Spain, learned Spanish, or finished my major. So after 45 minutes of circling the ginormous cloud o' lightning, the pilot announces that the tower is going to send a plane down to see if it can get through the weather....and that plane is gonna be us. Those were his exact words. Our level of fear was now at red, or severe fear. Why couldn't he have just said, Well, it looks like the weather has cleared over our landing zone and we'll just have to get through some bumps as we hit the tail end of the storm or something?? The descent back to earth was beyond scary descriptions and everyone clapped when we touched down. Anyways, we landed and I'm alive. I came home and wiki'd lightning and airplanes and found out that every plane gets struck by lightning at least once every year and all planes have lightning protection on them so that the electricity doesn't affect the instruments or fuel tanks. The biggest risk to an airplane in a thunder storm are the wind pockets it creates which can throw a plane out of control. huh. I'm pretty sure this is what happened to our plane: http://s.freissinet.free.fr/videos/foudre.gif