1. Best on Board


    Date: 10/22/2017, Categories: First Time, Author: blin18, Rating: 9, Source: LushStories

    Seven and a half thousand metres! And yes, the seatbelt light is still on. Ah Bob, you’ve still got it! Bob had set himself a challenge: to calculate the maximum altitude of the plane he was on before it reached that altitude. And it was hard, too; not just a case of looking up the cruising altitude of the plane. This was a short hop flight from Sydney to Coffs Harbour, the airline wouldn’t waste fuel getting all the way up to an efficient cruising altitude; it would only spend a few minutes there before having to descend. For one, that wouldn’t leave enough time for a pass of the service trolley, and secondly the airline would save fuel on the shorter climb. Bob wasn’t exactly thrilled by this trip, so a good mental exercise spiced it up a bit. Mum had virtually kicked him out of the house. He could still hear her barbs ringing in his ears. ~~~ “You’re nineteen years old, for God’s sake Bob! The prime of a young man’s life and you’re spending it playing World of Witchcraft ten hours a day…” Man she couldn’t even get the name right. And it wasn’t ten hours a day either; he usually goggled back in for a few hours after she went to sleep. “… no job, no girlfriend …” Geez, Louise! He was going to Uni in March. What’s the point in getting a shitty job at McDonalds for a month? And girls? Bob froze whenever a girl talked to him, especially a pretty one. What if she thought I fancied her? That I was trying to chat her up? She’d think I was a creep. It was safer to say nothing. “… ...
    I’m sticking you on a plane to visit your Grandmother …” What the fuck? “… You’re a good looking kid, Bob. Get out and enjoy the nightlife, Coffs is full of young people in summer. Get a tan, smoke some dope if that’s what you want to do; just live a little!” And then the kicker: if ever there was a take-back moment, the one thing you did that you wish you could reverse, it was this one. “Does Gran have broadband?” he asked. Big. Mistake. He’d never seen that look in Mum’s eyes before. It wasn’t frustration; and not hate, exactly, but it was a close cousin. “No!” she yelled. “No electronics. No laptop. No X Box,” she turned on a heel to leave and then: “AND NO PHONE!” ~~~ And that , he thought wistfully, is how you come to be sitting on a plane with no calculator and two pages of differential equations and aerodynamics . Still, it wasn’t that hard; he had to give himself a time limit to make it interesting. But I still need to check if I’m right, he thought. The airlines were on top of this stuff, the pilot would be on strict instructions to minimise fuel. He didn’t hear any announcement from the pilot earlier, but the flight staff would know. As soon as the seatbelt light went off, he pressed the button for assistance. Shouldn’t take long to call a flight attendant , he thought . Only a dozen or so people on the flight. Most of the rows were empty. Bob looked back down at his calculations, running a few last minute double checks. He had just satisfied himself that all was ...
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