Oh, those Dash-8s. They take a lot of punishment...

I was on a short BOS-PWM hop on a sunny summer afternoon in 1992 -- a "Northwest Airlink" (NW had a minihub at Logan at the time) Dash-8. We passed through 5000 on climbout and suddenly the airplane was being manhandled by poltergeists. Up, down, sideways. You could see the cockpit crew's body English up front and they were, um, distressed. The rest of us were dead silent. You know, rationally, the wings cannot fall off... but you start to believe it's going to happen. The damnedest part was, it was clear and sunny outside -- no clouds or precip -- just rogue winds at low altitude. The flight was 90 miles, felt like 90 minutes. By the grace of God I hadn't eaten all day. Those who had, got a second look at it. I am a calm flyer and sleep through all kinds of chop, but that half-hour on a Dash-8 careering around in the New England sky was terrifying.