We set out with plenty of time and though were stopped at the U.S./Canadian border, still had time for teriyaki and a nice, long sit at the gate before boarding. There was one small sacrifice– I forgot that my Leatherman multi-tool was still on my belt… It was supposed to have been in the checked baggage, and when i realized my oversight, it had to be let go. Inevitably a (very kind & sympathetic) security check employee had to take it from me~. This is alright though; apparently they round up all the confiscated items and send them to a second-hand store. Maybe someone in Canada is enjoying it by now!
It’s just a thing! …A very useful thing…
The 10-hour flight to London went well. All the employees on board had British accents and frequently dispensed water and various fruit juice, ever so politely. The intention was to read/write/draw along the way but it was rather dark and i didn’t want to disturb the sleeping man to my right. He had the window seat and he kept the window closed, though occasionally i’d open it and peek outside at the immense, fluffy clouds.
Note the fluffiness of the clouds. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Since i wasn’t going to have much light for reading, i chose movies instead. Due to the length of the flight, there was time enough for 3 features. I started with ,,Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which was fun to watch with the occasional, and incidentally synchronistic turbulence. Even on a 4″ screen, aerial maneuvers are more enthralling when you yourself are thousands of miles above the Earth in a shaking aircraft. Second movie was ,,Mr. Homes,” starring Ian McKellen as a retired Sherlock. I liked it and recommend it to others! Here’s a shoddy/nifty photo of that wee screen:
A good story on a tiny screen can still pull you in
We were served dinner about this time. British Airways seems to have pulled off a pretty tasty chicken dish with a breadless bruschetta side dish. And they handed me a tiny, complimentary bottle of wine to go with it, too. Another experience that seemed to fit with the film i was watching. Es war ein netter Moment.
After dinner i had to stretch my legs. Walking to the rear of the aircraft, i took note of my nearest emergency exits, as per the instructions upon boarding, and beheld the sea ice around Greenland from the porthole. It was an eerie feeling, amplified when i reached out to get my bearings and found my hand on the emergency exit handle. Shiversome is not a word, but that is how i felt.
…and there we were, wearing t-shirts in an insulated, pressurized metal tube full of human-stink and uniformed British women… Not much between us and semi-frozen ocean.
Vast fields of sea ice, and most of the moon (which looked much prettier in person, i assure you).
We fast-forwarded through night and caught up with the terminator line. Do you see that, the moon? We’re catching up with tomorrow!
Open ocean and clustered clouds. Dang, clouds are pretty. I think i like them even more from above.
I believe this was the Southern reaches of Iceland… We nearly flew over Northern coast of Ireland… Missed it by a few dozen Km (?).
I bet you want to see more clouds too, huh? Ich verstehe– me too.
Coldfluffies hitting a pressure ceiling.
on and on and on…
“I’m a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds.” ~Mike Tyson. Heheh. By ‘a handful of clouds’ he means ‘ears,’ and by ‘grab’ he means ‘bite.’ You are a funny, dangerous man, Mike.
The final in-flight movie was ,,The Martian,” which friend Chris had been plugging before we all parted ways in B-ham. (Thanks for the recommendation Chris, that movie satisfied. I hope you are having a swell time wherever you ended up moving!) That was another good movie to watch on a plane, as it had its own appropriateness for the situation. I sure couldn’t have survived outside of the craft i was in, either. Here’s a picture of Matt Damon looking sleepy:
Betcha wish ya had some atmosphere, or something other than poopy potatoes to eat…
And to my left, sleeping peoples in cramped spaces. …Hey, that would make a good album name.
The sun having risen, we were served some breakfast with a cuppa tea. Got so wrapped up in the movie i’d forgotten where i was and the return to reality made snackytime meaningful and the tea more delicious. The movie was over just in time for landing.
Thanks, i will “enjoy” it, and for the record, i drank all of it in.
We landed, disembarked and had a frantic adventure across the vastness of the Heathrow airport. First, a maze of stairs, about 6 moving sidewalk hallways, a bus took us across an eternity of strange passageways, underpasses, and risky intersections, then dropped us off still 15 minutes’ walk from our gate. We barely made it and i have no photographic evidence of that one time i went to London. Oh, wait! At least there are a couple aerial photos!
England from the sky~
More England from far above.
For lack of images from within the terminal, i did get this footage:
Wasn’t that fun? Wish i’d let it roll a little longer. There would have been a moment of passing right through a cloud followed by the plane erupting into sunlit fluffy-cloud-land.
This was only a 2-hour flight and was not so bad, only i had the window seat and contented myself with reading about the history of assassins, or was it Robert Frost poems?.. A little of both i think, but then i started seeing these:
So viele Windparks ! Die Energie ist grün und der Wind ist unsichtbar!
Here are a few pics of the city as it came into view. Some of the complexes almost seem to be spelling something…
If i knew the city better, i could probably see my neue haus von hier!
Like a geo-political socio-economic alphabet soup!
…i think the one at the bottom says ‘DOS.’
Erd und Himmel, halb und halb. I wish i could see this view as i continue exploring… It would be immeasurably helpful for orientation and learning the boroughs…
As soon as we arrived the sun went down again. This confused my internal sensors but also made it easy to reset some degree of circadian rhythm. But first we had to get to die Mitte, our home borough for the next 3 months… The cab drivers line up at the airport and you take the one at the head of the line. We tried to take one from the middle but he wouldn’t take us. That seems like a great way to ensure that every driver gets a cut of the action. This would be a great time to make a pun with the word ‘fare…’ Meheheh…
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