Distraction in flight
Yesterday, invited a friend to climb in the back seat of my Supercub for a jolly. It was a hot windless day in mid September, so as a treat I decided to make the flight with the side door open; this is OK in a Supercub, and you get an unsurpassed view of the landscape when making steep right turns.
Change of plan after climbing to 500 feet and realising how very poor was the visibility, so just flew along our ridge to the corner and back, turned over the local windmill, and increased power to climb high enough to see the airfield...
Evidently the brown legal size paper envelope containing the Flight Manual chose that moment to blow apart. A blizzard of white pages rose up from the rear and tried to escape out the open door. My passenger, with splendid sang froid, managed to gather all except two of the 120 pages.... we found one later folded around one of the wires on the horizontal stabiliser...the other alas must have found its way to the windmill.
I concentrated on flying. Of course, it was pretty funny.
A more serious distraction a few years back took place in a gliding championship in the Alps; the pilot concerned called on the radio to report a snake in the glider.
What interesting distractions have you experienced, I wonder? And how did you cope?