In Awe of Flying

Sometimes an occurrence can become so routine that we are blinded to just how amazing it is. I fly for business sometimes. Not as much as the guy I met recently who lives in San Diego and works in Tampa, but enough so that flying is not a novelty. When I am not travelling someplace really fun, flying brings up images of standing in security lines, waiting between flights and eating bad over-priced airport food (except at the Austin airport where they have Salt Lick barbecue!). Mostly it tires me out and leaves me achy the next day.


Yesterday my jaded eyes opened to the wonder around me for just a moment. I was on a Southwest flight taking off from Phoenix on my way home from a bankruptcy conference in Las Vegas. At the moment that the plane left the ground, I realized that I was in a long metal tube which was blasting off into the atmosphere. With new eyes, I realized that my commuter flight was a close cousin to a rocket ship, defying gravity like Icarus (but without the part about getting too close to the sun and melting). In a matter of moments, we were cruising at a level where the air was too thin to breathe and the temperature was too cold to survive without the protective shell of the aircraft. Even though I was tired and ready to be home in my own bed, I was amazed for a moment.

Morning in Las Vegas

The cool, crisp air and the pastel blue of the desert sky give the Las Vegas strip a feeling of innocence and natural beauty. As I jog down the strip, my lungs grasp for traction in the thin mountain air. However I am glad to be out of the hotel alone with my music and my thoughts. On this morning, my run is not going so well. I am running out of steam about halfway through. I take the time to walk a bit and observe. Gone are the bustling crowds of the strip with their cigarettes and beer cans, the girls in cocktail dresses and the ever present hustlers passing out cards for girlie clubs from the night before. The sidewalk is home to a few joggers, service workers going to their jobs and a homeless person carrying a garbage bag full of his possessions. However, reminders of the other Las Vegas are everywhere. LED signs (the high tech version of neon) on every building advertise shows. Abandoned news stands contain advertisements for seedy clubs. Nevertheless, the morning is one of vitality rather than excess. Construction workers in orange safety vests appear every hundred yards or so, fixing the streets and renovating the insides of future shops. This is a bustling city brimming with the hope of a new day which will give way to the carnival atmosphere after sundown.