8/13/05, 5:58 p.m. PDT
Ah, the beauty of owning a laptop. I sit on a 747 winging my way from Houston to San Francisco (via Denver; we are currently on the second leg). I’ve never been on a 747 before and am amazed/appalled at the size of this thing! If I poke my head out into the aisle and look forward, I can see where the fuselage of the airplane begins to curve towards the nose. With the flight deck up in the 747’s infamous hump, I guess the seats on my level just END at the nose of the plane. They should really put a window there!
I have only flown United once or twice before, and I had forgotten that they have a channel of the audio system devoted to the Air Traffic Control comm. It’s pretty interesting to listen in, though I’m sure Becca, as a pilot, would understand much more of it than I do. Our call sign for this leg is “United 595 Heavy” and we’ve been doing pretty much the norm. I did hear our pilot request a change in altitude during a prolonged period of “light chop” and we recently had traffic go past a mile to our left (and at a different altitude), so that was neat. Now that we’re getting pretty close to San Francisco, the comm has really picked up. They’re talking to all sorts of planes, telling departing flights to transfer to LA Center, Oakland Center, etc. Come to think of it, Karen would probably get a big kick out of this as well.
This morning I shot a race down at Galveston Island State Park. I shot it solo, instead of my usual freelancing, so that was exciting. Jay, one of the most active guys in the local running community, asked me to shoot it so that they can put together a photo album for the man who came up with the idea for the race but has recently had health problems and it in the hospital. I was shooting for that purpose, but had quite a few people ask me if the photos would be available online, so I’m going to make it happen. I’m currently about 75% of the way through renumbering all my photos to reflect the bib number of the person pictured — a tedious and manual process that I can think of no way to effectively automate. Anyway, I’ll throw all the photos up on my site and see if I sell any prints!
My ears just popped and the captain said we’d be on the ground in 20 minutes, so I guess that means we’re descending! San Francisco, I’m back!
