There are thoughts and experiences that are common and reoccurring to me during plane travel. Inside the cramped confines of today's "airbus" concept you taxi away from the gate at a speed approaching the crawl of a car trapped in a rush hour commute. Then the giant metal tube you sit within gains speed and somehow, although it has been explained to me I still do not fully understand it, leaves the ground and flies. Clouds take on the appearance of soft snowdrifts. Sunsets, which when viewed from the ground fill the sky, are seen as thin bright ribbons of color. When flying at night you see clusters of light, varying in sizes, which are cities and town. The illuminated grids become fainter and fainter as they ripple out to suburbs, exburbs and then dark rural blackness. Air pressure changes, your ears "pop'.
Of course the class system still exists. There is the upper crust, first class, with their more commodious seats and pampered service. Not to mention the drawn curtain that exists to separate "us" from "them". Us, the great unwashed, families, budget minded tourists and business travelers not yet high enough on the food chain to sit in front of the curtain with the titans. They dream of the day when they will be able to travel two abreast instead of three.
And me, holding my left elbow close to my body as I write in my southpaw script, trying, often in vain, to not bump the person seated next to me as I set rambling thoughts to paper.
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