I Love Flying

I love flying. I know some people hate it, but I don’t. I flew for the very first time just recently (about a year ago) and I fell in love with flying from the first time. A month ago I had my first 10+10 hour flight and I thought that perhaps that might spoil my love for flying, but it didn’t. Even flying back again the 10+10 hours and having the second plane changed to be 6 hours later than originally planned didn’t spoil my love for flying.

When I flew for the first time, I imagined that the feeling is similar to what the first train passengers might have felt. I’m in a huge machine that makes this horrible noise and is a bit scary but from it I see my world in a way I have never seen it before. For them it was a view of the world quickly running by. For me it was a view from above.

Before I flew for the first time I was warned about the pressure change. I was a bit afraid about that because my ears are fragile compared to other parts of me. I hate the feeling in the ears when there is a quick pressure change. (Is there an expression in English for that feeling?) But I didn’t feel too bad in the plane. What I noticed more than the unpleasant feeling in the ears was the pleasant feeling in my tummy. It’s like riding a carousel! Only stronger and cooler.

What I hate is the airports with their “security checks”. Because of them I thought I would try to fly as little as possible, but when I got into the plane, or more precisely, when the plane started going fast on the runway, all that nonsense with metal detectors was forgiven. But seriously, people working there have to put up with it every time they go from one side of it to the other.

The windows of planes are small but the views are hugely impressive. I love the way all the cities turn into models of cities and then in small patterns or somethings. And even when it’s cloudy like it often is, the clouds are impressive. I think they look way more solid from above than from the ground. On the ground I could never understand why people could believe they could walk on clouds. Thew clouds look so two-dimensional and if they look three-dimensional, they look evaporating. But from above they look like below the mist engulfing ones feet there would be soft but solid surface to walk on.

And when I first flew over a city at night! All the illumination made me think of gingerbread men for some reason that I don’t remember anymore. I also thought about hot gleaming lava trickling between patches of dark cooled lava like I’ve seen it on TV. And of the structure of the city and the large illuminated road connecting the two patches of light, what might those patches be – two cities or two parts of the same city, what makes that road more important and illuminated than other roads. It was beautiful.

The two long flights in a row didn’t kill my love for flying even after delaying my longed for return home. That leads me to believe that flying will never lose it’s magic in my eyes (or stomach). It might lessen over time, but not disappear. Even if all the magic is just the return home that I’ve longed for or the arrival to a new and exciting place. Flying is magic.