Home Again Home Again…

…friggity frog. (sniff)

Even though our first and last of three flights yesterday were almost an hour late lifting off the tarmac (in Rapid City and Atlanta) we got home about dark to a very very cold house that will take a couple of days to absorb heat from the wood stove and be compatible to human life without our flannel and wool space suits.

And then, we’ll look for signs of our travels–a sore throat, an achy muscle, a little fever. Hopefully, we’ll dodge that bullet having had the *WTGADC contagion that baby Taryn sneezed and snotted on us. Our immune systems will ward off the aerosolized rhinovirus from the human volcanoe three rows ahead of us. (*What They Get At Day Care)

But be careful, holiday travelers. Ann stopped me yesterday when the stewardess came by. She reminded me of this article I’d read her talking about how UNSAFE airplane water was, and on-board coffee and tea comes from their often-contaminated reserves of drinking water.

So hold your breath, hold your bladder, don’t touch anything and don’t drink anything that comes from the airplane tap. Read this–REALLY. And enjoy your trip!

The EPA advises anyone with a suppressed immune system or anyone who’s “concerned” about bacteria to refrain from drinking coffee or tea on an airplane.

“While boiling water for one minute will remove pathogens from drinking water, the water used to prepare coffee and tea aboard a plane is not generally brought to a sufficiently high temperature to guarantee that pathogens are killed,” according to the EPA’s Web site.

According to the EPA, out of 7,812 water samples taken from 2,316 aircraft, 2.8 percent were positive for coliform bacteria. Although that sounds like a small number, this means 222 samples contained coliform bacteria.