A week before the Rio trip I check my roster and I’m flying with a pretty decent crew. I get onto them straight away, and I’m making sure they know I’m trying to score one of the cabin crew girls. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to fly with her for months after it got exceptionally flirtatious on a trip to New York.

 

We agree they’ll leave me to focus on her and then the guys suggest, given it’ll be beach time, that we go Brazillian. I immediately panic as “manscaping” is something I parttake in, but I do not wax my undercarriage! They point out they’re talking about wearing Speedos to the beach and I calm somewhat because, thankfully, I use Speedos when I do sunbeds.

 

When we get to Rio there is no waiting around it is Caipirihnas for all but it gets messy way too quickly. My attempts to woo the girl fail miserably as I’m dribbling on myself after two cocktails.

 

When I wake up there are a number of pictures on my phone of me with people I don’t know and admittedly can’t determine the gender of. The ability to determine gender when I’m sober reinforces my decision making capabilities when drunk so it’s all a little worrying. I try to focus on other things and throw on my Speedos for beach time.

 

We hit the beach and when we get there I realise the lads have tried to screw me, they’re wearing board shorts rather than Speedos but the joke is on them. Everyone on the beach, everyone, is staring at me. I am getting the hungry eyes, Dirty Dancing style, as though it’s normal to stare like that. Men and women making me feel like a piece of meat makes me mildly uncomfortable but the crunches and sunbeds are clearly paying off.

 

The crew want to get cultural and decide to go on a tour of the Olympic Village and while I would pretty much love to see the bed Usain Bolt scored that model in I make my excuses and head off on a “personal errand”.

 

After my total and utter failure in understanding Zika virus and it’s implications I had taken to the internet to find out more and so I arranged to go and see a centre that is helping babies born with encephalitis. I get the opportunity to meet the people dealing with it day-to-day and I make a donation. They don’t appreciate the joke I crack about being “allergic to condoms” and what that might mean for me and Zika virus. I figure they probably have a enough on their plate without trying to understand my Westerner style wit, but I was only trying to lighten the mood.

 

When I meet the lads that evening to go see the Buddha statue that overlooks the city I’m feeling super about the Brazillian experience and then it happens. Two guys “roll up on us” and pull out guns and this ain’t no Ryan Lochte bullshit. I drop to my knees and beg for my life. I’d love to pretend I got tough with them but I’m left handing over my wallet and phone without hesitation. Suddenly I hear laughing behind me and it’s the boys with their phones out filming the whole thing. They got a couple of guys they know to arrange it for a prank. I’m not laughing and I spend the entire rest of the evening in fear of the damage this could do if it goes viral. If people were to find out how my “flight-or-fight” response abjectly disappeared at its most important moment I would be a laughing stock. You can’t prep for those types of everyday scenarios like you can for Engine-Fire memory items in an emergency on the flightdeck. Which brings me to my revenge.

 

We’re at 34,000 feet, two hours out of Rio, in the cruise and the other guy asks me if I’m okay to keep an eye on everything while he takes some “controlled rest” aka sleep. I’m like “sure I am, enjoy yourself. He nods off and I wait for him to do that mouth open, loose jawed thing people do when they go deep. Firstly I take his phone and delete that horrendous video and then I push the engine-fire alarm system test. Bells ringing, lights flashing and fire lights illuminated; he jumps so far out of the seat the intertial reel pulls him back into it. I’m so busy laughing I fail to notice he’s about to go rogue and shut down and engines on his own. I stop him before he does anything stupid!

 

Victory is mine.

 

LJ