Aboard a bumpy flight to Auckland on Saturday were many Bay identities.
Auckland's Viaduct Events Centre was playing host to the Air New Zealand Wine Awards, hence there were notables from the local wine industry and I also spied this year's Mastermind winner, Havelock North's William Barnes.
The turbulence was bad enough to force the airline to cancel their hot drinks.
As I'm disposed to do, I indulged in some flight-fright and had visions of smoking engines, falling planes and ensuing passenger chaos at 12,000 feet.
Given my livelihood I conjured up would-be headlines: "Bay's best brain, winemakers, die in crash", "Plane tragedy contributes to brain drain", "The vintners' bad luck" or, "Mastermind & wine masters, lost".