Nobody can call me in the air. I’ve got anywhere between 4 and 8 totally uninterrupted hours during which I can do some “heavy” thinking, or not think at all. I can actually read a book. And I can put myself totally at the mercy of other people whose job it is to get me where I’m going. Which, in this case, is nowhere.
Most of my life is so planned out that I don’t get much time to plan, if that makes sense. Sometimes I end up wasting time when I should be working, just because I get so many things going on in a normal day that I feel like I’m going to explode if I keep myself 100% to the task at hand.
Flying “nowhere” really does get me past that, at least for a while. And I will admit that I have a preference for the absurd, for challenges that most wouldn’t want to take on because they’re not something that a reasonable person would want to do. I mean seriously, if you get uncomfortable and fidgety after just an hour in an airplane seat, how can you intellectually face the fact that you’re voluntarily going to be putting in another 47 hours worth? That’s a mental challenge, and seriously, when you can stare down that sort of thing and ride it out, can you imagine what that does for your patience elsewhere? Nothing can stop you!
The other thing this satisfies is my love of figuring out how things work. Systems. Airports alone will tell you a lot about how things work in a given country. And it’s also fun to observe people, and how different they are in, say, a Manila airport than just about anyplace else I’ve ever been. Maybe Cairo comes close. You do start to develop an appreciation for just how nice SFO really is, and how relatively-orderly things like security and finding your gate are here, vs, say, Guam (or Manila).
And finally, one of the greatest things about an epic two-day trip through the air is that feeling you have when you arrive back home. Maybe it wouldn’t feel so great if you weren’t fighting a shoulder that just can’t get comfortable in an airplane seat?
