Flying High (Again)

Flying is not much like it used to be. Getting on a plane recently, I had cause to ponder it.

I remember a time when flying to my Mother's house from my boarding school, she decided it would better to pick me up in Oakland rather than drive to San Francisco. Which no doubt, is a better idea. But, if you're familiar with the Bay Area at all, you know that the distance between these two cities is approx nine miles, or the distance of a bridge over the bay. Sure it takes longer than that to drive around to the actual airport, especially in Bay Area traffic. And the SF Airport is not located in the actual city like some airports (thankfully). But taking an actual flight across the bay ? Is just ridiculous. And that, my friends, is what I had to do. I remember it clearly because I was young enough to not realize how silly of an idea it was. Until I got on the plane and we were in the air for approx 5 minutes to jump over the Bay. I looked into it. You can't even GET a flight like that any more. Which I find humorous. It makes sense. I dont think anyone could charge enough to warrant getting a plane in the air any more for that brief amount of time. Nonetheless, it was a flight I won't forget :)

There have been other changes to flying in the past 20 years too. And since the time span i indicated is TWENTY years and not ten, not all changes have to do with 9-11. Besides not getting the free meal (and now, not even getting free fucking peanuts), do you remember when pilots actually served as  tour guides too? They used to tell you to "look out the right side of the plane and you will see 'X'". What ever happened to that? I'm still interested in knowing. I suppose some angry business travellers got tired of being woken up. But somehow, the magic of flying became a borish chore instead. As we flew yesterday and I got a glimpse of some mountains, I looked closely. Below me where large granite formations and, possibly even a waterfall ? I thought we might be over Yosemite but I had no way of knowing. It made sense though. Yosemite is almost a straight line to my house and my house is definitely in the flight plan of those heading to the Bay, which is also almost a straight line to get there.

Of course, as usual, I usually run a blog through my head and then never type it out and post it. In this case, I decided to actually do it since it had been on my mind and of course, once again, I cannot recall all the thoughts that had gone through my head, there seemed to be more but I can't currently recall what they were.