My first helicopter ride

Yesterday, I went on my first helicopter ride and I expected it to be terrifying but it surprisingly was not. Taking off and landing both felt weird – it felt like the engine was straining to work and that it really didn’t want to go up and the sensation didn’t feel like being in an airplane at all. I had a similar experience getting on a camel which you think will be like riding a horse but then it stands up and lurches in an entirely unnatural way.

Unfortunately, my helicopter ride was interrupted by work emergencies – how to change a 4 hour visit to Petra into a 2 ½ hour visit because the helicopter pilot was nervous about bad weather. Thankfully, I also learned quickly how to communicate while riding a helicopter – the answer: text messages. I have to admit that in the U.S. I NEVER sent text messages because 1) the phone company charges you for them and 2) I just didn’t spend that much time using my cell phone which was invariable in the bottom of my briefcase and turned off.

Here is Jordan, however, I am never separated from the cell phone (nor is any Jordanian). In fact there are more cell phones than Jordanians and nearly every household, regardless of income (and this is a poor country) has one. Some people have more than one because it is expensive to call friends who don’t use your cell phone company – this would be like having a Nextel and a Verizon phone and you’d use your Nextel phone to call your friends with Nextel phones and your Verizon phones to call your friends with Verizon. You can tell what phone service people have because the phone numbers differ – we use Zain.

On a helicopter, my Blackberry and its email capabilities only worked when we were pretty low to the ground and near a town – but the flight to Petra is mostly over the desert so the email was typically not working. Additionally, even when the cellphone part was working it is too noisy on a helicopter for the person on the other end to hear you. Thankfully text messages worked during the entire flight. I was able to send messages to my colleagues who had driven ahead to Petra that looked like:

Pilot sez we mst leave by 330. mst chg schedule. Pls cancel lunch reserve. Order 13 sandwiches for 1:20. thx!!!

Although the actual message probably had more typos. My colleagues on the ground totally saved my congressional visit. The senator and congressmen with whom I was traveling (the helicopter was not just for me) got lunch AND got to see Petra. And I got to see the park from the air – which was indeed very cool. I will post some not very good pictures tonight.