I've Looked at Clouds from Both Sides

In the last few months I've had the occasion to fly to Detroit three times for work.  Its been a few years since I went anywhere by air. Just over five years, to be exact, when we flew to Texas to visit Moosebeere while he and his family were living there. In recent years, flying has become quite an adventure, much more complicated than it used to be. 

Flying is amazing, however, regardless of what you have to go through to get in the air.

I am always amazed by how fast the ground falls away once the plane gets off the ground.  Once the wheels leave the runway it is only a matter of minutes before everything looks small, everything begins to look just the satellite view from Google Maps.

Then you're up in the clouds.  Clouds are amazing, especially when you're right up in them.

When I was a kid at home I used to look up at the cumulonimbus clouds and image I had some way to get up and fly around them, dodging about, in and out of the nooks and crannies about them, staying always out of them but all around them at the edges.

When you fly you get to see the top side of the clouds sometimes.  In these flights back and forth between Detroit and here the plane cruises at about 5 miles up.  The clouds sometimes look like the piles of snow; fresh, clean, white snow.  Unless, of course, they're dark storm clouds.  Fortunately, we didn't have to deal with any serious storms on any of these trips I took.

And there was the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.  It's kind of hard to see in this picture, it was getting dark as we flew west into the sunset.  Its hard from the air to tell where you are; I couldn't guess where this was.

On this last trip, a little farther west out over the lake, the clouds flattened out.  It reminded me of quilting batting, all stretched out, ready to be sewn into a new blanket.  Like I've seen plenty of times as Brombeere, or my Mom, or my grandma have sewn quilts over the years. 

Flying is sometimes uncomfortable, I've never had the pleasure of flying first class, and getting through big airports, or through security in any airport, is a hassle now days.  But if you end up with a window seat and have a decent view outside, its really amazing.