Always An Adventure

I know some of you think that flying is always an adventure, and that might be true, but sometimes the adventure is sort of lame. Like yesterday, for instance. We boarded the plane on time pulled away from the gate, got in line to take off, and apparently, that's when things went to hell in a handbasket. The radio system in Kentucky went down and they had no way of communicating with planes over their airspace. Since a ton of flights are routed that way, that meant we were all grounded until someone could make the radios work. This took over 2 hours, then there was the backlog of grounded planes to handle. So we sat on the runway for over 3 hours - doing nothing - just sitting. What an adventure. Ha!

And the worst part was, we were one of the lucky planes. Over 100 flights that didn't get away from the gate were cancelled over this fiasco. And once again, I must say "Thank God for First Class upgrades!" At least I had a semi-comfortable chair, chocolate chip cookies and drinks. So I took the time to call my mom and work on my taxes. Altogether, it was a thrilling afternoon spent in a hot plane on the Dallas runway. Oh, did I mention that the air conditioning doesn't really work on planes unless they're in motion??????? Yeah, it was beautiful.

These are the kind of adventures I could do without.

Which makes me think about writing. Someone once told me that fiction was life but with all the boring stuff removed. How right they are. Can you imagine writing a heroine sitting on a runway for 3 hours? Fine if it's a hijacking or something, but if she's doing her taxes and talking to her mom, who the heck wants to read about that.

I mean sometimes we have our characters eat and shower (although even my shower scenes tend to have some action), but we don't cover everything they do. I don't recall ever having a character brush their teeth, but I'd like to think they have. My characters also never go grocery shopping or stop to fuel their car. It's life but with all the boring, normal stuff removed. Which is interesting when you think about it because I'd be willing to bet that most of our real lives is the boring normal stuff. So what do you figure - 5% adventure, 95% boring normal?