looking out the window

Just got back, more or less, from 2 weeks on the East Coast. Been having trouble getting over the jet lag, and back into the swing of my life. Luckily my life is swinging a lot less this month.

Many highlights to come later, but the things sticking foremost in my mind are some of the sights outside the airplane window. I could be aloft for hours and be happy peering down at the ground trying to figure out what stuff is, where I could go, and just plain wondering about humanity.

There was an amazing sunset over Salt Lake City. Clouds were flat at some 10,000 feet, allowing plenty of the setting sunlight to come in. Everything was that warm red, the moutains and clouds practically glowing. The lake was still and reflecting the sky perfectly. So perfectly, that islands seemed to be floating in mid air.

Then there was flying out of Chicago on the day after the 4th. There were fireworks everywhere, popping off like mad all across the city and suburbs, big, small for miles and miles and miles. It was amazing. But then we flew over miles and miles of thunderstorms, not just one thunderhead but a great mass of clouds flashing first intermittently then nearly constantly with lightning, a beautiful soft white pulse, the brighter pulses exposing the structure of the clouds. The final cloud, a huge thunderhead trailing the pack, lit up like a lightbulb with the occassional bolt of lightning playing across the face of it, like some instrument of Dr Frankenstein. Never seen anything quite so amazing.