Terra Incognita

I Was Sitting in an Airplane Over Winslow, Ariz*…
SOUTWEST AIRLINES — …Such a fine sight to see. This is the first time I get to travel with Jack Jr., and I figured I needed to maximize the opportunity. So here I sit 12,000** feet up in the air, headed to Denver, composing a blog post in Word.

I hope I never tire of sitting in a window seat. When I traveled with a couple flatmates to Italy for spring break in 2003, one of them scoffed at me when I got excited that my seat on Alitalia was by the window. I’m sure she thought I was some poor provincial Kansas farm girl who was not as privileged as she was, flying home for term breaks while at Mizzou. She was an experienced traveler and the novelty of watching the earth below was, well, beneath her. I felt sorry for her, actually. We were flying over Italy! Who wouldn't want to look out the window? Flight travel amazes me,*** and I love to experience the whole trip. I love the deep rush of the engines as you pick up speed down the runway. I love how quickly you rise and how fast the large buildings become so miniscule. I love how when the plane tilts, you don’t really feel it inside, but when looking out the window the ground seems to pitch and turn. I love that on my last trip, during a flight to Chicago, we flew over the Midwest and I nearly flipped out when I recognized Manhattan below us. I wanted to announce to the cabin, “There’s Tuttle Creek! That must be the new Super Wal*Mart! I see my old neighborhood!” It all fascinates me, and although I plan to travel pretty much forever, I hope sitting in the window seat never gets old and that flying (or driving or traversing by train) never becomes mundane.


*According to our captain, we did just fly over Winslow, how appropriate.

**Total wild-ass guess. I have no clue how high planes fly; and I've always been bad with numbers.

***A couple years ago, we were dropping Ally off at the airport to go back to Kansas, and she made the comment, “I still don’t believe planes can fly. I can’t believe it actually works to get that big thing up so high. I’m just lucky that the pilots believe it.”