We did a touch and go to Germany last week. A United 747 carried us from San Francisco to Frankfurt, and the 777 brought us home, and I had window seats both ways. We stayed long enough to watch the kids get married, and for me to eat all of the German food in that fair city. The local citizens were likely happy to see me leave, as they now face famine until the next crop of sour kraut and snitzel comes in. I can only imagine the horror our pilot must have felt as the end of the Frankfurt runway rapidly approached, and his aircraft was struggling to lift my newly acquired weight off the ground.
I enjoy the view of our earth from high above. I pull out the road atlas prior to any flight and imprint into my brain the landmarks that I will watch for as we fly over. I like to look for places I’ve seen from the ground, and for the big landmarks, like Half Dome and the Grand Canyon. Once I spotted a dirt road in the Nevada desert that I had bounced over in the truck years earlier. So I was looking forward to this aspect of the long flights to and back from Germany.
We took off headed north, veered to the left of San Francisco and quickly banked directly over the Golden Gate Bridge, heading northeast. Gorgeous as usual. And then we ran into the clouds. I already knew what clouds looked like from the inside, so this was no thrill for me. But the bigger disappointment arrived when the flight attendants asked all us window sitters to pull down the shades to darken the cabin, just in case anyone aboard wanted to sleep all the way to Germany, to somehow help cope with those nine time zones in between. So except for those few moments when I cheated and peeked under a barely opened window shade, I couldn’t watch much of where we were going.
During those peeks, I saw some Idaho mountains, and what I figured was North Dakota. Not too many large landmarks in North Dakota except the Missouri River. And then the water soaked center of Canada rolled by below us. In between movies, the big screen at the front of the plane showed a gps map of our flight, and some pertinent facts relating to our progress. Over Ontario we enjoyed a 120 mile per hour tailwind, which nudged our ground speed up to 720 MPH. I snuck a peek out the window just as we left the sun behind, and somebody’s contrail glowed pale pink just below us on the starboard side. And then it got real dark outside.
Somewhere over the Atlantic, between Iceland and Ireland, we found the sun again. I was sitting on the shady side of the aircraft, so I missed out on the actual sunrise, but the colors cast upon the clouds below did not disappoint. Remember the last time the washing machine overflowed, and those billowing puddles of suds spread across your new hardwood floor? Well, that’s what these clouds looked like from above. Only ours were spread over an already wet ocean so they didn’t wreck anything, and they were turning pink to red just for me, and the pilots, cause they didn’t have screens over their windows.
The movie screen said we were at 43,000 feet altitude, and the outside temperature was minus 60 degrees F, so I left the window closed.
Scattered cirrus clouds well above the cumulous puddles turned color first, and then the billowing ones below got the treatment. Another airliner, following a parallel path a few miles to the south, glinted silver when painted by the sun. Those poor folks who actually got some sleep on our plane missed the show. For their sake, I pulled down the shade again.
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