Do make say think

Thursday Oct. 22nd 2009. We've just played our 1st show of the tour, we were super-nervous playing the new material for the 1st time to a sold-out crowd at Scala. Our next gig is in Greece the following day, our flight at 7am from London. So we decide not to bother sleeping, just get a few beers and go up to the room and do a post-mortem on the show. We get on the half-empty plane to Thesaloniki and most of us sleep some. As the plane is starting to descend after the 3 hour flight, it then goes abruptly upwards and accelerates!!? WTF. No one really says anything at this point, but after about 10-15 minutes of circling the runway, we are starting to wonder what's up. The captain says "cabin crew come to the cockpit immediately". The crew goes to the front and looks worried - that worries us. We are then told that they cannot confirm that the front landing gear is locked into position, as a light in the cockpit didnt go on as it should. The landing gear is down, but the front wheels were not "locked". So..... we were then told by the captain that this should'nt be anything to be alarmed about, but protocol states that we must assume the emergency landing position which is to put our heads between our knees - as if this is gonna help much when the front of the plane smashes into the landing strip when the front wheel get crushed, and a fireball comes up the cabin. As the plane is about to land, and our heads are tucked between our knees, we hear the two cabin crew at the back yell alternately, "BRACE BRACE!" "BRACE BRACE" continually. WE ARE ALL FREAKIN OUT! Oh ya, from when the captain told us our landing gear problem, to when we were about to land, lasted about 30 minutes. This was plenty of time to loose our shit multiple times. Actually the plane was dead-silent, no one freaked out, but it was tense as hell. Sure enough we landed fine. Fire engines were there on the tarmac, and we exited the plane in the middle of the runway. It was 11am when we got there on hardly no sleep. We pulled out the vodka and went to work on it. We left the airport, as a news crew was on its way in to interview people. We played a great gig the next night, and Adam and myself stayed up a second night in a row - sheer adrenalin and beer. Go to "Lucky Lucky" or "Berlin" club in Thesaloniki if you want to drink till sunrise after you've almost died. The best part about this story is everyone in the band has their own take on it - hilarious. mitch