"The Trail" Part 2

Not everything on the trail is funny. Dying isn't funny. I mean, sure, "Weekend at Bernie's" is funny but more often than not the prospect of your life ending (especially at the young and surprisingly successful age of 27 -- hello ladies) is not one to chuckle at. So with apologies for a lack of comedy, enjoy part two.

I am going to cheat a bit and risk a bit of legal mumbo-jumbo. I posted the following back on 2/7 on the blog I got paid to write for on the trail (there's a part 2 to part 2 after it):

A few weeks ago, the Huckabee press corps was up in arms because the campaign discontinued the press plane in order to save money lost on empty seats. Ahead of Super Tuesday, the plane came back as Huckabee criss-crossed the south on his way to dominance there February 5th.

After a day of interviews in Little Rock, Arkansas, Huckabee took to the skies again this morning. He and his staff loaded into one Hawker 1000 jet and the seven members of the current traveling press corps loaded into another just like it. The flight plan took both planes from Little Rock to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Huckabee and his staff landed as scheduled, but something happened to the press plane while in the air.

About 10 minutes before landing, the plane rapidly descended. It took the dive so fast and for so long that, had we not been buckled in, we surely would have hovered an inch or two above our seats. We chalked it up to the speedy jet we were using and were reassured by the playful grin of one of our pilots; but apparently all was not well.

The next ten minutes were a series of dips and turns - one so sharp the thought of flipping upside-down flashed for an instant in my mind. At that point, I decided it best to stare down at the floor until we touched the ground. One of my colleagues from another news organization comments immediately after landing that she never wanted to watch a pilot land a plane again. She had watched the landing through the open door of the cockpit, and apparently it was something akin to seeing sausage being made.

"Where are we?" one passenger asked.

"Morristown Municipal Airport," our pilot shouted back.

I thought it odd that the same pilot told me we would be landing in Teterboro, just like the Governor. "We have a problem," the pilot told us. Apparently while in the air, all of the planes systems stopped working - most importantly, the ability for the computers to maintain the planes altitude. "It took both of us to keep it up," the pilot told us. The co-pilot immediately exited the aircraft, visibly shaken.

All aboard were on the ground and safe, albeit a bit shaken. The airport supplied a shuttle and we were able to get to New
York City where Governor Huckabee is taping interviews for talk shows today.


Yup, we risked our lives to cover the good Governor's appearance on "Tyra." The man in the Klatu Barata Nikto silver suit seemed a bit much as we exited that plane, but precaution is precaution. The bottom line was we were all safe though and the experience was much worse as it sunk in than it was as it happened.

Flash forward a mere three days. Still a bit skittish from our ordeal, we were back in the comfort of our 30 seat Dornier jet, a mainstay of the trail. Huckabee was campaigning throughout Virginia ahead of the Potomac primary two days later. It was a windy day -- so windy that Hillary Clinton canceled her appearances in Virginia because she didn't want to risk the flights. That same day in that same state the Huckabee campaign, desperate for votes decided to take our lives in their hands and fly -- twice -- in the dangerous winds. Imagine the most terrifying roller coaster you've ever been on. Now imagine the entire thing suspended 14,000 feet in the air. It's been well over a month and I'm still bitter about the whole thing. God forbid we drive the two hours (we had six hours to get to the event) and save us from at least one of the death flights. This was a theme of the campaign all too often: take the longest, most inconvenient, most circuitous route to your goal. Perhaps that's something to examine in the post-mortem.

The rest of our time on the road some of us referred to the campaign as the Buddy Holly campaign -- ironic too that back in October the Governor and his band played the Surf Ballroom in Clear lake, Iowa; site of Holly's last concert before his plane would crash early the next morning killing him, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper.