30,000 feet above planet Earth is no time to find out you are no longer amongst friends.  Its also no time to find out that chartered Flight 151 on Tikiyaki Airlines is turned decidedly towards the ground at a sharp angle of descent and that 30,000 foot number is getting smaller by the second. It’s one passenger (me) was in BIG trouble!  I couldn’t stop now, though.  I had the recipe.  It was in my hand and I had to get it safely home.

“Fez Monkey, what Recipe?” … you ask.

Or maybe … “Hey Fez, why is your airplane falling out of the sky?”

Or even … “Why are you on an airplane?”

Questions that I ask myself over and over all the time!

It all started out simply enough.  I was returning from a fairly easy mission in Tangiers, but one that still caused me to work up quite a thirst.  I needed a special drink to cap off a long three days so while I sat on the plane I put pen to paper and started writing.  This drink was shaping up really nicely.  It had a good balance of juices and rums but needed a little something extra, and that’s what I was struggling to figure out.

Suddenly the faint sound of suppressed gunfire made a muffled thump and a huge blast of wind hit me in the face.  I looked towards the front of the plane and the pilot was slumped over in the chair and the control panel was smoking … clearly both were recipients of the recent gun blast.  To make matters worse, the entire crew had just parachuted out of the back door with one person left to jump.  It became apparent that this was not the usual crew, but rather members of the super-secret evil organization known as BACARDI (Bad Apples Continuously Arranging Ruthless Deadly Intentions).  As the last guy turned to jump he paused in order to say some parting words … “Goodbye Fez Monkey!  I hope Tangiers was worth it!”  Classic bad guy move.  Why stop to talk when you could just get away.

Unfortunately for this BACARDI agent, the pause gave me just enough time to grab a bottle that had rolled out of the liquor cabinet on the floor towards my hand.  I flung it back at him and struck him square between the eyes, which caused him to lose his grip on the door opening and fall helplessly towards me.  As he tumbled past I was able to grab the parachute off his back ad he continued falling into the pilots cabin.  I crawled my way back to the door and, as luck would have it, sitting on the floor was the bottle of Pernod that I had used to facilitate my escape.  It occurred to me that this would make the perfect final ingredient to the drink recipe that I clung to in my other hand.  I grabbed the bottle, gripped the edge of the door opening, cocked an eyebrow and shouted back at the groggy ne’er-do-well … “I guess it’s true, Absinthe does make the heart grow fonder!”

With that the recipe for the Jet Pilot was finalized and I jumped!