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.