Flying

As I set off to board my tenth and final flight in the last three weeks, I want to share a few of my personal thoughts on flying.

- When I was younger, I used to want to live at the airport. The excitement of packing a bag and going somewhere else was always exciting. Since I have become more of a traveller, airports and planes make me want to vomit.

- I've decided that I can't decide which is worse: getting to the gate REALLY early and sitting there, or being in a rush to make your flights. The latter makes you sweat from the running, and you could say that for me. To get to flight number 9, I had 27 minutes to run three terminals (no moving walkways, thank you very much LAX) to the very last terminal in the place. To get to my last flight, I had 45 minutes to run down 6 moving walkways (thank you, SFO), take a shuttle, walk on the runway, take an elevator, and three flights of stairs. Needless to say that, without a break to pee or put on deodorant, I smell really bad. But since the man next to me smells like fish, I don't mind so much.

- Have you ever noticed the absence of clocks in the terminals? Especially when you're in a hurry.

- If you really think about it, doesn't the whole process of commercial flight seem unnatural? I mean, if you take the body of the plane away, you have 150 people flying in the middle of the sky. Wierd.

- Sometimes I just like to sit at the airport and watch people come and go. I wonder where they're from, where they're going, and what they're going to do when they get there. Then I usually want to laugh at their travel clothing and push them out of my way.

- Flying over the Grand Canyon is one of the greatest in-flight experiences to have. No matter how many times you've seen it, it never fails to be breathtaking. (Unfortunately), it's about the most exciting thing that's happened to me at 35,000 feet.