Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Why I Don’t Fly
The headline is misleading. I do fly. I fly nearly every week. Forty or fifty round trips per year for the last several years.
Those flights have many characters. Sometimes I stretch out and sleep across three rows on a nearly empty morning flight. Friday evenings headed home every seat is packed and the mood is rowdy. Sometimes I put on my headphones and keep to myself. If my neighbor is interesting I’ll talk the flight away.
Once in a while a flight stands out from all others. Often it is the perfect sunset viewed off the left wing from 37,000 feet. That perfect palette of colors that is enjoyed by people in New Mexico and lucky airline passengers.
Very very rarely, there is the ultimate high when it all comes together perfectly and we are flying above the clouds under a full moon. The experience can only be described as rapture. As you descend to just above the clouds, lit with silver light, silent and calm with no sign of the world below, perfection is attained.
Which is why I cannot take the risk of getting a pilot’s license. Come the first cloudy night with a full moon I’d take off and fly and fly and never come down.