I haven't flown in years, and these all took place way back in the day when you could still smoke on airplanes, which made some of these stories possible I suppose. My first flight was near the end of high school. I saw an ad for a music store in Washington, DC in a magazine that looked too good to be true, so I called them. Sure enough they were getting ready to stock the new 2002 cymbals by Paiste. They only had so much shelf space so they were selling off all their remaining stock of Formula 602 cymbals for $2 an inch. You might not understand how insanely cheap that was, even at the time, but you can say that it would make 602 freaks cry.
You could get a 20" Ride cymbal for example, that probably sold for around $150 or so back then for $40. A $300 pair of hi-hats was $56 and an 11" Splash was $22. I made enough money selling the cymbals to cover my flight and give me a few free cymbals. My friend's girlfriend was going to school there. She lived in a dorm but it was coed and she said I could stay with her. She was really straight and was down on everything but alcohol. She didn't even like pot. She was picking me up at the airport and I didn't want to show up too high.
Still it was my first flight on a commercial airline so I decided to commemorate the occasion by tripping. I had a couple of hits for the flight there and the flight back. The plan was to time it so I'd still be high on the flight but I'd be mostly come down by the time I was to meet my buddy's girlfriend Catherine. The flight was departing around 6am. I didn't want to leave my car at the airport so I got a kind friend named Steg, who owed me a fave or two, to drop me off at the airport and pick me up late that night.
He dropped me off at the airport around midnight. He hung out for a bit and then went home to bed. I had a book, some magazines and a bowl. I read, walked around the empty airport, smoked a bowl or two and dropped the acid around 3am. Again things were very different back then. You could smoke in public and there weren't cameras every 25'. It was no big deal. I had to first fly to Atlanta on a DC-10, with an hour layover, and then fly a 747 or whatever it was to DC.
I was less than three hours into it and tripping pretty heavily when I boarded the DC-10. Since it was an early flight it was mostly businessmen. I sat between two of them who were intent of having a conversation, sometimes involving me, for the short flight to Atlanta. I wasn't really in the mood for conversation but I did alright. I had an oh-shit moment when I looked out the window. I was sitting over the wing and I noticed that it was moving up and down a considerable amount in relation to the fuselage, and all the only thing holding the wings on was a row of bolts.
For a minute I was thinking stuff like "How old are those bolts? How many stress cycles have they been through? Are they worth a shit to begin with? The wings could separate and fold up and the plane could drop like a rock...shiiiiiit." I quickly put it out of my head and I really enjoyed the rest of the flight, businessmen and all.
I guess everybody who flies gets those brief moments occasionally, but tripping, a thought like that could really do a number on your head if you let it. You need a somewhat strong mind to trip to begin with, but doing it on an airplane is something I'm guessing very few people, even heads, would ever think about doing. It's intense.
I was still tripping pretty good on the flight from Atlanta to DC. I don't remember much except that it was a lot smoother than the DC-10, and when the stewardess brought breakfast, my scrambled eggs were moving. I managed to eat them, with toast, bacon and coffee, and it was pretty good. The plan was for Catherine to pick me up at the airport and drop me off at the music store to pick out the cymbals and arrange to have them shipped, and then do some sightseeing. I was going to get her a nice dinner for helping me out, and then I'd take a Redeye back to Alabama.
We had a nice afternoon and a great dinner at a restaurant right by the river. We went back to her dorm room to grab my stuff. She had something to do before we left for the airport...whatever it was it took her a long time, and we were pushing it a bit when we left. There was a wreck or something that delayed us even more, and by the time I got to the airport, gave Catherine a hug and a kiss, and went running through the airport holding my bags and leaping and jumping like OJ, I missed my flight by five minutes.
Since we were late she was going to wait a while to make sure I caught the flight in time, so I went back and got in her car. I was going to get a room somewhere but she said it'd be fine to stay with her. I knew my buddy might think we'd cooked something up, but it made the most sense and I wanted the company. Ordinarily it wouldn't be a problem to stay the night, and I'd forgotten for a moment, but I'd already dropped the other two hits for the flight home, and I'd really be getting off in about 15 minutes. "Shit." I knew that for the next several hours I'd have to pretend not to be tripping my balls off. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if she'd found out but it wouldn't have been a positive thing. I didn't even want her to know I was smoking pot, much less that I'd just taken some acid.
She'd planned to hit a few parties on campus, which was the last fucking thing on Earth I was in the mood for. Any other time it'd have been fine, but when tripping that hard it's best to be out in the woods somewhere, or on an airplane, where I'd planned to be. Great...I'll be meeting 150 people I don't know, and I can't let Catherine or anyone else know that I'M TRIPPING MY EVERLOVING BALLS OFF. I really didn't have much choice, so off we went. I was hoping that the lights at these parties weren't too bright, because my pupils were as big as dinner plates.
I actually did fine. I tried to relax and just talk normally and try to ignore the fact that they all had cartoon faces and shit, and it went smoothly. It's a bit of a blur but I'll never forget one thing I saw as long as I live. It should've been in a movie. There was a party on maybe the 7th floor of a frat building. We had to climb up a central staircase that was carpeted and had fancy wooden railings. At the bottom was a hand-laid tile floor. It's one thing to stand on a railing and look seven floors down a spiraling staircase when you're sober, but tripping is another story. Luckily I don't have Vertigo or fear of heights, and it was mesmerizing to look down.
I wasn't paying attention to anything but the corkscrew staircase going down seemingly to infinity, and I was trying to look as long as I could without it seeming unnatural, when a kid walked up next to me and leaned over the railing. He was sick. Very sick. He threw up and I had a bird's-eye view of the trail of vomit going all the way down and splashing the tile floor seven floors below. I don't know why that's all I can remember about the first part of the evening except to say that it was certainly graphic, and could've been a scene in Animal House all day long. Plus it took a lot of brain power to act like I wasn't tripping, and it didn't leave much for memory. It was just the usual frat shit anyway. Been there, done that.
Luckily, soon after the amazing technicolor yawn I convinced her to leave and go do some nighttime sightseeing, even though it was cold as fuck. We walked along the river and had to hang onto each other to stay warm. After climbing up and down all those stairs and hitting that bitter-ass wind and cold I made it through the geeky phase of the trip and I was settling in and really enjoying it. We had a late dinner in this amazing place and went back to her dorm at around 1am.
She got into a thin nightgown and started talking shit regarding sleeping in the same bed but I thought about my buddy and I just couldn't oblige, so I pretended to be asleep, although it took several hours to actually fall asleep. She was a sweetheart, and hot as a firecracker and available, but I couldn't act on it. With the sisters I passed up alone, for reasons of "brohood," sometimes I feel like walking around with a sign on my back that says "Kick me."
I slept maybe three hours and awoke with a start almost. I felt like something was different, and maybe with all that cold it had snowed. We didn't catch any news of it coming, but I looked out the window and sure enough it had snowed over a foot. It was the first real snow there so it was pure and white. I ran out and flopped down in it. Like a typical douchebag I made a snow angel, and girlfriend took a photo. I wish I could see it now. We played in the snow for a bit and had breakfast and then played in the snow some more. Like me she was from the South and not used to much snow, and she'd only been there a few months so she was enjoying it too.
I talked about this years ago but the flight home that night was spectacular, and I was so glad I'd been delayed a day or I'd have missed one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life. A big storm had dumped snow from Canada to Tennessee. The skies were mostly clear all the way back to Alabama and there was a full Moon. It was late in November and there were lots of Christmas lights everywhere. The plane took off and flew around the metro area an a fairly steep bank, and I got to the the Monument and stuff from above, with over a foot of snow, and with Christmas lights everywhere. It then straightened out and headed south.
The view was breathtaking. It was maybe 10:30 and most people were either snoozing or reading. I wanted to go around waking everybody up to see it, but it was just for me. The snow started out at about 14" in the DC area and Virginia, then dropped to about 6-8" down to Tennessee and ended with a few flurries here. I could see the ground clearly, and the moonlight radiated off the snow. I could see every lake, river and stream. When we'd fly over a city or town there'd be clusters of Christmas lights, some reflected in the snow. To see Christmas lights from that perspective was like being in a flying Christmas card. I'll never forget how beautiful it was.
My next flight, right after high school, was to San Francisco. I was going to visit my buddy George from California. The flight there wasn't anything special. I smoked as many bowls as I could before I boarded the plane but nothing major. The flight home was a different story. The plan was to stay a month, and then George was going to fly back to Alabama and live with me for a while. We were going to become a drum/percussion team, which would've been unique, and it happened in a parallel universe I'm sure.
It was the flight back to Bama that was the party. George had a couple of rare motorcycles he'd been trying to sell for two months. On the morning of the Saturday we were leaving California they both sold to different buyers. George was flush with cash so we went on a last-minute shopping spree. We got three different kinds of weed and then hit the music store. George bought a Talking Drum and a couple other things. The flight left San Francisco around 10pm. We packed the Talking Drum and some other hand drums and percussion items into a big suitcase and took it onboard the plane, just in case there happened to be a jam, and we ended up creating a party.
The flight wasn't very crowded. Most people were still awake. People were generally a bit friendlier and more engaging back then and we'd started a conversation while we were still on the tarmac. When we leveled-off we pulled out a couple of drums and started playing. Oh, but first we went into one of the restrooms, which was dubbed Party Station 1, and smoked a few bowls.
We left the pipe in there for anyone who wanted to join in, and there was a steady stream of traffic to and from Party Station 1. I can still picture this one stewardess who'd wink at me when I'd come back from the restroom. Finally I winked back and nodded toward PS1. She went in for a minute or two to freshen-up as it were. Times were a little different back then.
We had so much fun playing drums and pretty soon people were switching seats and had formed a circle, more or less. A couple of people wanted to sleep so they moved to the rear of the plane and we didn't bother anyone. We handed out the rest of the percussion instruments and everybody started jamming along. We played the whole way until the plane started to descend.
Everybody had a blast and were hugging each other and stuff. That's what music's all about. It was a Drum Circle before they were hip, and probably one of the few held on an airliner. I don't reckon you could pull it off these days and that's a shame. That was a treat and I bet a few people who were on that flight still talk about it.
My next flight was just a short hop from Atlanta to B'ham. I've told this story before but it's hilarious, and I have to include it here anyway. My pal Rusty and I had moved a lady and all of her stuff to Atlanta, and after a week there she flew us back home. It was a morning flight and again mostly businessmen. I knew we'd basically be going up and coming back down in half an hour, and I wanted to be altered for the flight, so I hit the restroom with my Proto Pipe.
Let's just say that it wasn't exactly Party Station 2. I fired up the bowl before the plane left the ground, and my dumb-ass didn't consider the fact that the plane had to be in flight and depressurized for the smoke to get sucked out through the vent like it did while in flight. The vent fan was on but it wasn't drawing yet. I lit the bowl and took a huge hit and to my horror, instead of being sucked out the vent the smoke curled up to the ceiling and back down to the floor. Here I was with a freshly-lit bowl, and the tiny space was filling up quickly with smoke. It was another oh-shit moment. Do they make Hallmark cards for those?
Once I realized my plight on the flight I figured I couldn't get any more busted, so I finished smoking the entire bowl. Fuck it. After I finished smoking the bowl it was like a Rock concert in there...or at least one from the 70s. I could picture what was going to happen when I walked out, like a scene in a movie, which it definitely could've been. I opened the door and a thick cloud of pot smoke preceded me down the isle. You couldn't have done it better with special-effects.
The smoke was thick and it basically clung to my body as it billowed out a few rows in front of me. If there was any doubt who the smoker was that day it vanished, because the cloud of smoke was staying right with me. It was like the character of Pigpen from the Charlie Brown cartoon. He carried his own dust cloud around with him. As I took the long walk back to my seat, row after row of newspapers dropped in well-choreographed fashion as the businessmen smelled smoke as it passed by and looked up to see who the perp was. It's funny now but it wasn't then.
I went back to my seat and sat down next to Rusty. The pot cloud followed me. Rusty didn't want to even acknowledge that he knew me for the rest of the flight. A funny thing about pot is that if you get stoned, and then find yourself in a situation where it's really not a good idea to be stoned, like talking to the cops or whatever, the effects are magnified greatly and you feel ten times as stoned. It happens every time. I was sitting on a plane, trying to disappear into my seat, and I'd just filled up the cabin with pot smoke, and everyone knew it was me. Ha, no worries there.
I had visions of the FBI waiting for me on the ground and things like that. Nah, it really wasn't that bad. I didn't expect to be arrested but I could have been. I relaxed and enjoyed the enhanced effects of the buzz. A few people were pissed though, and I felt bad about that. It's no joke when I say that everyone on the plane knew I was responsible for the odor of burning rope that permeated the plane. When the stewardess brought my breakfast she literally dropped it on my tray. Message received, loud and clear. Oh well. I couldn't do much about it, and I already knew it would make a funny story one day.
I also flew to Colorado with about 15 friends to see three Dead shows at Red Rocks, but there's not much to report since we were saving our energy for the shows. We all got really stoned before we got on the plane of course, but there weren't any psychedelics involved. It was fun being on a plane with a bunch of friends, and we were fired-up. It was the same bunch of us who always hung out anyway, usually at the crazy restaurant, and we'd be sitting around talking and we'd forget we were on a plane.
It was pretty much the same story coming back, except that we were a little tired, and basking in the afterglow of coming down from acid, not getting much sleep, being a little sunburned and seeing three great shows. I think we were all a little more aware that we were in the air on the flight back. Most of those people are still friends to this day. It was much nicer being on an airplane with 15 friends than sitting between two businessmen having a conversation while I'm tripping my nurtz off.
It's been a long time since I've flown anywhere, at least on a commercial airliner. I flew in my dad's plane a few times but that's about it. I have a funny feeling I'll never fly again but maybe I'm wrong. Of course none of the above things could have happened these days, at least in the last two decades or so, and young people would have a hard time believing they could happen. To say that times have changed is putting it mildly. Well, that's my stoned flight log. It was fun. The skies were a lot friendlier.
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