Alright, here we go.

It is Wednesday, May 10th, my sister’s birthday.

So if you happen to be my sister and the one whose birthday it is, happy birthday.

If you’re not her, please ignore the previous part of this message.

But today we’re going to talk about an airplane experience I had 13 years ago.

Is that right?

It was 2010.

So let’s talk about May 2010.

But first, you know what we have to do.

Taxes.

No, no, no themes on.

Your Daily Lex.

It was May 2010 and I was flying to Los Angeles to go work at a company that still exists but is no longer known by its old name.

At the time it was called Demand Media.

Now it’s not.

Now it’s called Leaf Group.

But you know, I had been commuting basically to LA once a month, sometimes every other month, sometimes more than once a month.

But it really started to make the world feel smaller to me, particularly unsurprisingly the US because I would live in Jersey and go to California all the time, go to LA all the time for work.

And it was good.

And I was actually on a flight when they were unveiling the iPhone.

So I had to watch that one on delay.

I didn’t get to see it live or even watch, I guess, the live blogs live.

I, you know, I saw it late.

Oh, well, it’s OK.

I didn’t even know that they’d announced it until after I landed because I didn’t get that headline on my Blackberry.

But there was this trip in May where we take off.

We’re flying, I guess we’re at cruising altitude or close to it.

And then the the captain comes on.

He’s like, hey, the flight crew is going to come through.

The flight attendants are going to come through the plane and they’re going to show you how to take the brace position.

Didn’t get a lot of context.

He probably says something like, don’t don’t panic like there’s but whatever.

But he’s like, they’re going to show you how to take the the brace position.

OK, so they come through and show you.

Then the captain comes back and says, look, my machinery says everything’s fine.

But a plane flying above us says that one of our engines is on fire.

We don’t see that.

We don’t have any recording indicating that.

But we’re going to go back to Newark and make an emergency landing.

So you’re going to take the brace position and we think we’re fine.

But, you know, this is what we do.

It’s an abundance of caution.

We want to be careful.

So here we go.

It’s a little scary.

And, you know, so we’re turning around to land and we.

We land surrounded by, I don’t know, a dozen fire trucks and a bunch of ambulances.

And then they won’t open the door for the plane for a while.

And the captain’s explaining, you know, there’s so much oxygen or pressurized whatever in the cabin.

So if there is a fire incident and we open the door, we can create its own problem.

So we’re going to keep it closed up for a bit.

And then eventually they’re like, OK, it turns out, yes, indeed, the engine was on fire.

We’re going to get a replacement plane and we’re going to get you out of here really quickly.

So we’re going to get everybody off, take all your stuff.

Obviously, we’re going to use a new plane.

And here we go.

So I had to make a decision in that moment of am I going to get on the new plane?

And it wasn’t really that much delayed.

It was a couple of hours.

I mean, listen, there’s a delay in a couple hours, a couple hours, but it wasn’t like you had to wait for eons.

But so I have to decide, am I going to get on this next plane or am I going to go home and not take this trip?

And I had this, you know, you got to get back on the horse mentality.

If I don’t get back on a plane right now, I’m never going to get on a plane again.

So I did.

And it was actually not even United Airlines.

It was still continental at the time, but continental like we’re going to give everybody a care package.

And I made a quick will have a fire extinguisher.

So funny.

The new plane, I recall, and I recall because I have an old Facebook status about it, but the new plane had Percy to televisions which I thought was very exciting because that was a still a new feature in 2010.

But so I decided I would get back on that plane and or the replacement plane, but many folks didn’t.

That plane was maybe a third full on the second try, but I got to LA.

I still got to LA before some people got to work that day because I was taking a probably a five 30 am flight, which would without an incident, take me to the office around 10 30 in the morning Pacific time.

Uh, within it was probably around noon and you know, it was a internet startup.

So some people were still cruising at late, but I went up to my boss and I’m like, this is what happened and I don’t want to work on dumb stuff anymore.

So I did evolve a bit when I was working on a tech company, good stuff.

But man, I had forgotten a bit about that flight until it came up in Facebook memories a little bit earlier this month.

So I wanted to share that story with you.

Uh, so anyway, now you know your daily Lex didn’t exist back then.

So this is like a your daily Lex blast from the past, except this wasn’t an episode of the past.

It’s a time travel.

You get it.

Happy Wednesday.

Lex.