Redding Municipal Airport

Despite the Fire, Redding Municipal Airport is still open from 5 am to Midnight.

I have flown into Redding from Seattle, Portland and San Francisco over the years.

It can take passenger jets and private jets so it is a pretty large airport. The next Airport this size heading north is in Medford, Oregon by the way that can take passenger jets. I have obviously flown out of Medford too to Portland.

My Medford to Portland flight was memorable in a strange way though. I had (within the last month) or so in 2015 had a burst appendix and a week later after the doctors were able to finally diagnose it an emergency operation. So, this was an ongoing nightmare kind of experience because in 2015 I was 67 and this is hard to have your appendix burst at this age and not know for sure what is wrong and just think you are dying and have been abandoned by doctors for a week. If you are going to have your appendix burst do it at a younger age please! IF there is a good part to this story it was that I was already on Medicare so the operation and all help only cost me around 1500 dollars instead of 40,000 to 60,000 which it would have otherwise.

So, I was still dealing with a level of PTSD and coughing from a device they stuck into my upper lungs to prevent me from dying of reflux on the operating table during a laparoscopic surgery. But, this made me cough almost all the time for about a month which meant I couldn't sleep either. So, when I took a flight and left my motor home at the Medford airport up to visit my older daughter in Portland I had trouble at altitude because this plane I don't think was pressurized and flew about 10,000 to 12,000 feet in altitude. So, I when I realized I was coughing too much to be able to get enough air I notified the stewardess I was in trouble because of the thin air in the plane. She got a doctor who was flying on board to help me and gave me oxygen which they usually carry one or more canisters on the plane. So, it became way more exciting that I wanted it to. But, in the course of a lifetime we all have a lot of really crazy things that happen to us and it's important to learn to roll with the punches life gives us or else we are all soon dead before our time.

There is something to be said for learning to be both calm and fearless because you need this to make your mind work logically and reasonably even in emergencies.