my heart goes oh oh, oh oh, oh oh, oh!
How can anyone travel by aeroplane without shouting, my God, my God, what a miracle this is?
I love flying. As I only manage to board a plane every four years or so, I frequently forget this, but it's fantastic. I love airports, and strange people, and all of the weird compact convenience things that a plane requires (weird tiny bathrooms! tiny packets of pretzels! orange juice in cans! little trays! overheard compartments! why do I love these things? I don't know), and most of all the flight itself, looking down over the world flooding down below you -- mountains look strange and crumpled from far above, cars look as though you could tumble them into piles with a fingertip, clouds cast strange shadows down on the world -- and once we came upon a city -- I think it was when we were descending towards Minneapolis -- and from above you could see all of the skyscrapers crowded together in one little patch, a toy city you could scoop up in your palm. At night the world glimmers. And the sun was beginning to set as we descended towards Seattle, the sun reaching through the windows, the length of it skimming golden across the waters, sharpening the tiny window-glittering sides of buildings. And the Alaska mountains from the air, dear God! White and craggy, plummeting into sharp valleys of some other world: and once I looked down and firelights were glimmering on the mountainside, and it was one of the most magical things I have ever seen.
Also, the whole three flights I had this Martha Tilston song going through my head, as well as this by the Paper Raincoat.
Travel seems to be reinforcing my cautious estimate that people are awesome. I had so many wonderful people offer help and good talk, from, hey, the guy from church, Ernie, who offered to drive me to Pittsburgh (he was picking up his wife at the airport and her flight arrived two hours after mine left -- coincidentally, she was coming from Hawaii. oh, opposites!), to the woman who picked up the water bottle I dropped and made sure I didn't forget it, to the couple in the tram from the main airport to the concourses helping me find my way, the male flight attendant on my first (tiny tiny!) plane from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis who grinned at me and complimented on my nifty folk-festival bag (it's all brightly coloured and has tassels and sequins -- but in a nifty Asian way and not a trashy American way -- and embroidery and room), to the friendly young woman also on her way to Anchorage -- but to climb Mt. McKinley! And then there was Geoff, who may have been flirting with me (ack... I take all friendliness at face value, but he did walk up to me and shake my hand before sitting next to me in the waiting area, and later he asked about my dating life...), but he was very nice, and kind of overwhelmingly impressed with my life as a homeschooler (I forget how we got to that topic).
I find myself somewhat shocked, because nothing seems to have gone wrong. None of my flights were delayed -- two arrived slightly early! -- and I didn't lose anything and my luggage made it to Alaska (the last two times I flew it got lost and I didn't get it back for a day or two; okay, so the last time was nearly three years ago and the time before that was ten years ago) and I didn't sit by anyone weird (mostly twenty-something men who wanted to sleep and/or listen to music the entire time). I did have this bizarrely spazzy flight attendant on my last flight -- I have no idea what was going on (or what she was on!), but she made all of the announcements in kind of a weird voice, and sometimes she would start laughing uncontrollably for no reason I could tell and had to shut off the intercom. I mean, not in a creepy crazy sort of way, but -- you know in films when people are on the phone or something and in G-rated films there's usually like an animal or small child tickling them and in, er, more grown-up films they're being snogged or something and it's very distracting but they're trying not to let the person on the other end of the phone know about it? It sounded a lot like that. I don't even know, you guys.
Anyway, flew into Anchorage at a little after eleven -- which was a little after three on my body's time, but the whole day was so surreal in terms of time passing that it didn't really feel that time at all (how strange it was to look down at my iPod clock telling me that it was eleven at night, and the sun only just beginning to set! the strange thing about flying long distances is that time seems to cease to have meaning; it's kind of relaxing, in a way). Kyra was waiting at the luggage claim in a Blue Sun t-shirt, and we hugged and I almost fell over and eventually we drove to her house and talked for two hours or more until we finally fell asleep. And now I am typing in her living room, waiting for her to wake up, and enjoying the lovely quiet of the house.
I love flying. As I only manage to board a plane every four years or so, I frequently forget this, but it's fantastic. I love airports, and strange people, and all of the weird compact convenience things that a plane requires (weird tiny bathrooms! tiny packets of pretzels! orange juice in cans! little trays! overheard compartments! why do I love these things? I don't know), and most of all the flight itself, looking down over the world flooding down below you -- mountains look strange and crumpled from far above, cars look as though you could tumble them into piles with a fingertip, clouds cast strange shadows down on the world -- and once we came upon a city -- I think it was when we were descending towards Minneapolis -- and from above you could see all of the skyscrapers crowded together in one little patch, a toy city you could scoop up in your palm. At night the world glimmers. And the sun was beginning to set as we descended towards Seattle, the sun reaching through the windows, the length of it skimming golden across the waters, sharpening the tiny window-glittering sides of buildings. And the Alaska mountains from the air, dear God! White and craggy, plummeting into sharp valleys of some other world: and once I looked down and firelights were glimmering on the mountainside, and it was one of the most magical things I have ever seen.
Also, the whole three flights I had this Martha Tilston song going through my head, as well as this by the Paper Raincoat.
Travel seems to be reinforcing my cautious estimate that people are awesome. I had so many wonderful people offer help and good talk, from, hey, the guy from church, Ernie, who offered to drive me to Pittsburgh (he was picking up his wife at the airport and her flight arrived two hours after mine left -- coincidentally, she was coming from Hawaii. oh, opposites!), to the woman who picked up the water bottle I dropped and made sure I didn't forget it, to the couple in the tram from the main airport to the concourses helping me find my way, the male flight attendant on my first (tiny tiny!) plane from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis who grinned at me and complimented on my nifty folk-festival bag (it's all brightly coloured and has tassels and sequins -- but in a nifty Asian way and not a trashy American way -- and embroidery and room), to the friendly young woman also on her way to Anchorage -- but to climb Mt. McKinley! And then there was Geoff, who may have been flirting with me (ack... I take all friendliness at face value, but he did walk up to me and shake my hand before sitting next to me in the waiting area, and later he asked about my dating life...), but he was very nice, and kind of overwhelmingly impressed with my life as a homeschooler (I forget how we got to that topic).
I find myself somewhat shocked, because nothing seems to have gone wrong. None of my flights were delayed -- two arrived slightly early! -- and I didn't lose anything and my luggage made it to Alaska (the last two times I flew it got lost and I didn't get it back for a day or two; okay, so the last time was nearly three years ago and the time before that was ten years ago) and I didn't sit by anyone weird (mostly twenty-something men who wanted to sleep and/or listen to music the entire time). I did have this bizarrely spazzy flight attendant on my last flight -- I have no idea what was going on (or what she was on!), but she made all of the announcements in kind of a weird voice, and sometimes she would start laughing uncontrollably for no reason I could tell and had to shut off the intercom. I mean, not in a creepy crazy sort of way, but -- you know in films when people are on the phone or something and in G-rated films there's usually like an animal or small child tickling them and in, er, more grown-up films they're being snogged or something and it's very distracting but they're trying not to let the person on the other end of the phone know about it? It sounded a lot like that. I don't even know, you guys.
Anyway, flew into Anchorage at a little after eleven -- which was a little after three on my body's time, but the whole day was so surreal in terms of time passing that it didn't really feel that time at all (how strange it was to look down at my iPod clock telling me that it was eleven at night, and the sun only just beginning to set! the strange thing about flying long distances is that time seems to cease to have meaning; it's kind of relaxing, in a way). Kyra was waiting at the luggage claim in a Blue Sun t-shirt, and we hugged and I almost fell over and eventually we drove to her house and talked for two hours or more until we finally fell asleep. And now I am typing in her living room, waiting for her to wake up, and enjoying the lovely quiet of the house.