Transcript - “Listening Time” Episode 91

Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. Hey everybody, this is Conner, and
you're listening to Episode 91 of the Listening Time podcast. Thank you all for listening.
I hope that this podcast has been very helpful for you. And thank you to all of my
Listening Time Members and all of the people that have signed up for the higher tiers
of the membership. Thank you all for your support, and for helping me do what I do.

Remember that if you haven't signed up for my membership, you can do that
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episodes where I speak at normal speed, then make sure to become a Listening Time
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And if you want to ask me questions regarding English or language learning, and
have me answer them in a video Q&A session, then become a Listening Time VIP. So,
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Alright, in today's episode, I'm going to talk a little bit about my worst ying
experiences. So, this should be a fun one, because it's always fun to tell bad stories
after they happen. It's not fun when it's happening, but it's fun to talk about this story
afterwards when it's already over. So, I'll tell a few di erent stories about bad ying
experiences that I've had.

Remember that you have the transcript for this episode in the Description, so
click on that if you need it. And if you like this podcast, please give it a ve-star rating
and a review, and share it with anyone else you know who's learning English. Alright,
let's get started.

Alright, let's talk about my worst ying experiences. So, I've own a lot in my
life. I've probably own a lot more than the average person just because I have had to
travel a lot back and forth between my city, my hometown, and my city in Mexico
where I lived for years. In English, when we say that you do something “back and
forth,” like you go back and forth, y back and forth, etc., this just means that you go
between those two places again and again. Right? So, I y to one of those places, and
then I y back here, and then I y there again, and I y back here.

So, I've had to y back and forth a lot between these two places. So, I’ve
probably been on… I don't know how many ights, or how many individual planes…
probably more than 200 in my life, I imagine. So, I've own a lot. And so, because of
that, I'm not scared of ying. I'm not like terri ed of being in the air. However, I am
nervous about being so high above the ground in a man-made machine. I still get
nervous today even though I've own many times, maybe even hundreds of times.

So, I'm one of those people that gets a little bit nervous. But I mostly get
nervous during the takeo and during the landing, not so much while we're in the air.
Mostly the takeo … that's when I get the most nervous, and then after that, I'm usually
perfectly ne. So, I'm not the person that gets really scared on ights, especially when
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 we're in the sky, but there have been a couple of occasions when I have gotten scared.
So, let me talk about those.

So, maybe my worst experience on a ight was when I experienced really bad
turbulence. The word “turbulence" refers to when you're on a plane, and you're ying,
and the plane starts shaking. This is turbulence. So, normally, turbulence doesn't
bother me at all. And turbulence is perfectly normal. It's not something to worry about.
But sometimes, it can get bad, and that's not fun.

So, there was one occasion in particular when it got pretty bad. That was when I
was ying from Guadalajara to Tijuana. And it was a sunny day. The weather looked
great. It didn't look like a day where there would be a lot of bad conditions in the sky.
However, when we were close to landing, maybe less than 30 minutes from our
destination, the plane started to experience some turbulence. And that wasn't a
problem for me. I never care when that happens. I was reading a book and just minding
my own business, as we say.

And the turbulence started to get a little rockier. In English, when we say that
something is “rocky,” that means that it's not smooth. It's the opposite of smooth. So,
the turbulence got rockier. It started to get a little more violent, we could also say. And
we started to experience a few drops where the plane would drop for a second, and
you would feel that sensation in your stomach. Right? And then all of a sudden, there
was a freefall. In English, when we use the term “freefall,” we’re talking about
something that is falling in the sky from a high place usually, and there's nothing to
stop it from falling. It's just falling at full speed.

So, if you've ever gone skydiving before, you will experience freefall for a short
period of time when you jump out of the aircraft and you're just falling down, right? So,
the plane actually went into freefall for a few seconds. And that was the rst time that I
had experienced such a drastic drop when ying. And it was like being on a roller
coaster, or something, when suddenly, you just go down very fast.

And no one was ready for this. And people started screaming, crying. There was
this one young man that had really bad anxiety and he was just screaming at the top of
his lungs. In English, we use that phrase “scream at the top of your lungs” to mean that
you're screaming with full force. So, he was screaming at the top of his lungs. And the
ight attendants were rushing to get back to their seats, and for a few seconds,
everything was crazy.

And then, thankfully, that was the worst of it. It was still kind of bad after that,
but we didn't have another free fall that was as drastic as that one. But it was bad
enough that I stopped reading. When I stop reading on a ight, you know that things
are getting a little uncomfortable, because normally, I can just read during the
turbulence. It doesn't matter to me, but that was another level.

So, that was the worst turbulence that I ever experienced. If you've never had
this happen to you on a plane, be thankful because it's not fun. It feels very scary even
if, like me, you know that there's no danger, this is really normal, planes are built to
withstand crazy turbulence, so it's not something you need to worry about.

And I've had students before that are ight attendants and pilots, and I've asked
them all of my questions regarding safety on planes, and I've learned a lot from them.
And I've learned enough to know when to actually be concerned and when there's no
cause for concern. And I've never been in a situation where I should actually be
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 concerned. That's never happened, thankfully, but this one was the time when I
experienced the worst turbulence.

Alright, let me talk about another situation now. So, the next one has to do with
the landing. So, this happened to me last year, actually. And in total, I've actually been
on three di erent ights where there was some issue with the landing and we couldn't
land when we wanted to. That's happened a few times to me, but the rst two times
weren't that bad. This third time that happened last year, was de nitely the most
extreme.

So, we were ying from Tijuana to Guadalajara, and this was at the end of the
summer, and there was a big storm in Guadalajara, because this happens a lot during
the summer. And it was a big thunderstorm, but planes were still landing at the airport
there. And we were approaching the airport, and we were descending and getting
ready to land. Everything seemed relatively normal.

And we were going lower and lower and lower, and we were all waiting to feel
the wheels of the plane touched the ground because we were on the runway. In
English, the word “runway” refers to the strip of ground where the plane takes o and
lands. So, we were right over the runway, and we were all waiting to feel the plane
touch the ground and it didn’t, and all of a sudden, I heard this big roar of the engine
like it was going into turbo or something.

And the plane felt like it started going faster, and then, it went up, and we didn't
actually land. We were really really close to the ground. I'm talking like, I don't know, a
few meters almost, from the ground, and we didn't land. We actually went up and went
back into the sky. And it was a really strange thing. And everyone was a little nervous
about what had just happened. Thankfully, we were still okay, but everyone was
wondering, “What just happened”?

And then nally, after a few minutes, the pilot told us that the conditions were
making it a little risky to land, and so they decided to abort the landing, as we say. And
so, that was okay. But then, we were back in the sky in the middle of the thunderstorm.
We were right in the heart of the storm. And every two or three seconds, there was a
ash of lightning all around our plane, just ash after ash of lightning.

And it was really freaky, to be honest. We were ying through the storm, and the
lightning was lighting up our windows. And we thought that at any moment the
lightning would hit our plane, which happens sometimes, and it's usually not a big
problem. But it's still a scary thought for most people. But I couldn't see anything but
these ashes of lightning all around us every few seconds.

And I think almost everyone was pretty nervous at this point. And I saw other
people gripping their arm rest. In English, we use the word “grip” to say that someone
is grabbing something. So, people were grabbing their arm rests pretty tightly. The only
person who didn't seem to be a ected at all during all of this was my wife. My wife
doesn't get nervous at all during ights. She thought the lightning was super cool. And
she has absolutely no fear at all when it comes to ying or being in that situation. So,
everyone else was a little nervous, but my wife thought it was really cool.

And so we just had to do one big loop in the sky. In English, the word “loop”
refers to a circle. So, we had to do a big loop in the sky and then come back and try
our landing again. And this time, it was okay, and we actually landed. And I was very
thankful to be on the ground. So, that was a little bit of a scary experience for me.
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 Maybe it didn't sound too scary now as I told it to you, but in the moment, I was pretty
nervous.

Alright, I have one other story to tell you. This one is di erent because it's not
related to being scared on a ight. This one has to do with a ight not going as
planned. So, this happened a few years ago. We were ying from Guadalajara to
Tijuana, and everything was normal about the ight until about maybe two thirds of the
way to Tijuana. I noticed that we were not ying in the direction of Tijuana anymore.

I'm sure that nobody else on the ight even noticed this, but because I've done
this ight so many times, I know this ight like the back of my hand. In English, we can
say that we know something “like the back of our hand” to say that we know it really
well. So, I know this ight like the back of my hand. I can tell when we're on course and
when we're not on course. And suddenly, I realized we were not on course. We were
ying in a little bit of a di erent direction, not like completely di erent, but just a little bit
o .

And then, I waited for some announcement, and sure enough, about ve
minutes later, the pilot told us that we were ying to a di erent city because Tijuana
was experiencing fog. This is when you have a really thick, white, like, cloud. It's not
the same thing, but it's kind of like a big, cloudy atmosphere where you can't really see
much. We call that “fog” in English. And so, because of this fog, it wasn't safe for any
planes to land at the airport there.

So, we had to go to a di erent city called Hermosillo, and we had to land there,
and then once we landed, we waited. We didn't get o the plane. We just waited there
for about an hour, waiting to see if the conditions would change in Tijuana so that we
could go and y there. But the conditions did not change. And so, we had to get o the
plane, and we had to wait inside the airport there for more information about our ight.

And there were a few other planes that had also landed there, and they were
also waiting for the same information. And it took hours before we could nally get
information about what would happen. And they told us that we had to wait until the
next morning until we could actually y to Tijuana. And this was terrible. We had to
sleep there overnight on the ground.

And because this wasn't technically the airline's fault, they didn't give us
anything to help us. They didn't give us any money or refund. They didn't provide us
any food. Nothing. We just had to sleep on the cold ground there at the airport and wait
until the morning. And there was only one store open in this airport late at night. And
so, there was a really long line to try to buy food from this one store. And this was an
awful experience. We were so tired. We had nothing to eat. We were sleeping on the
ground. It was a really bad experience.

And then, thankfully, in the morning, we were actually able to y to Tijuana. But
the bad thing was that there were a lot of people arriving at the same time because
nobody had been able to land at the airport there the night before. So, everyone was
arriving the next morning. And so, it was super crowded, and we had to wait in line for
a really long time to actually cross the bridge, which goes from the Tijuana airport to
San Diego, California.

There's a bridge that actually goes over the border, which is very convenient for
people who want to go to San Diego. They can just y to Tijuana and then take this
bridge from the airport over into the US. So, usually there's almost no one there. It's
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very easy to cross. But this time, it was a nightmare. There were so many people there
at the same time trying to cross. So, it took us a long time to nally get to the US. It
was like a day, full day, pretty much. But it was a really bad experience, and I hope that
never happens to me again. So, that was not the same type of bad experience. We
weren't scared or anything, but it was really annoying and uncomfortable and
exhausting. So, that was another one of my worst ying experiences.

Alright, why don't we stop there for today? I hope this episode was interesting
for you, and I hope it was good practice for your listening. Remember that if you want
my specialized training, you can click on the link in the Episode Description below this
episode to become a member.

And if you want my advanced podcast episodes, then you can become a
Listening Time Family Member or VIP, and you'll receive two new advanced episodes
every month where I speak at normal speed. This will help you practice to become an
advanced listener. And if you want to ask me questions about English or language
learning, then become a Listening Time VIP, and you can ask me questions every week,
and I'll answer those in a video Q&A session.

And also, follow me on Facebook to receive a lot of free English practice. That
will be helpful for you as well. So, click on the Facebook link in the Episode
Description. And of course, you also have the transcript there. And so, you can listen to
this episode as many times as you need until you can eventually understand everything
that I'm saying without using the transcript.

And if you like this podcast, please give it a ve-star rating and give it a review,
and share it with anyone else you know who's learning English. Alright, thank you for
listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.

*Click on this link to access my Q&A Sessions, Advanced Podcast Episodes, Bonus
Episodes, and Listening Practice Seminars: www.patreon.com/listeningtime
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