Between the Indigo and the Ice

The plane to New York was small but nearly empty. I hadn't flown in a while so I spent the entire flight, about an hour, with my face against the window. At cruising altitude the clouds beneath you look like a barren Arctic wasteland under an indigo sky. How this scene got into our vernacular as the image of Heaven escapes me. Beautiful to look at, but I wouldn't want to live there.

I like to try to guess where the plane is by the landscape I see, but the sky below was overcast the whole way. When the plane finally descended through the cloud cover, the first land I could see was incredible - we were directly over Manhattan, approaching Central Park. We've all seen pictures, but to fly over it is awesome.

From Laguardia I took a bus to JFK for the flight to Milan. Now that is a big airport. It took quite a while to find my gate, and when I got there it looked like a refugee camp. I was reasonably certain I needed to go look for a hotel. The attendant said he was working on standbys now when I asked him, so I just stood right by him and watched nervously. I got one of the last seats on the plane, deep in economy class.

Economy class on a large international flight has a lot of character to it. The key noticeable features were an interminably screaming child and the man behind me who apparently was never satisfied with the status of the phlegm in his throat. God had mercy on me and plugged my ears as the plane ascended.

About a half hour into the flight the drink cart finally came. A very cheerful man offered me juice, water, soda - I ordered a beer. He continued cheerfully. "Would you like anything else?"
"Do you have Jack Daniels?", I asked.
Still quite happy, he produced a small bottle and asked, "what would you like with your Jack Daniels, sir?"
"Ice."
"Uh, anything else?"
I looked at the tiny bottle of Jack. "Yes," I said, "another bottle of Jack Daniels."

The rest of the flight went pretty smoothly.