pacplyer wrote:

‘Hay' Grump,

I gotta tell you I thought that was some pretty good enroute poetry
last post. You gotta include that with the rest of "The Badwater
files"

Here's mine:

*Soul searching in the thin air*

Night flying at high altitude. It is unnatural for airplanes to fly
at night up here. Especially in clouds at night. You are balanced on
a knifepoint, suspended in space with no sensation of any speed
whatsoever. It can be a surreal experience. Maybe it's the slight
hypoxia. If you do it for an hour, you may nod off, come back to, and
wonder if you're just sitting in a simulator on the ground. Maybe
you're just sitting out on the ramp in the dark and you haven't even
started this trip yet. Or worse… Maybe you're dead. It just doesn't
seem part of this life at all. It seems fake. It seems impossible
that here you are floating without any turbulence or stars or anything
except these voices in your head. Your breathing is slow and these
low detached voices are asking some gatekeeper for the "direct" way
home. There's just something supernatural about it all. It is not of
this world I tell you.

You are truly alone with your thoughts if you're solo at night and the
voices leave you. Just you and the stars and the weather. It does
have a pacifying effect on the soul. If music can tame the savage
beast, then being up here in this dark place with little magic lamps
glowing in front of your outstretched hands can cure all your worries
about the crumby world below. You are not supposed to be up here,
you know it, and the Gods are permitting it for some reason you'll
never be privy to. Thank god Apollo is in his Chariot on the other
side of the world right now. Why if he saw your complete control of
the night heavens, he might turn green with envy and strike your
mortal ship from the sky!

pacplyer

(goddamn it, I copied you again! Something about your love of flying
always gets me dreaming – Thanks Bill.)


Saved, for further contemplation flying home some night...

You too, pacman.

Richard