"Fear of Flying" or "Into Thin Air"

This is Denali on the solstice. Go ahead, click on it to make it bigger. It's worth it, and I'll keep waiting. Denali looks like it does the rest of the year (it doesn't change much, being a mountain and all, not like leaves fall off of it), but, right now there is actually light so you can see it, and no cloud cover. I took this from the MiG 21 I bought after the settlement I had over spilling coffee on myself (who knew that would be hot?) due to a piece of asbestos flying off a DC-10 and hitting my Ford Pinto.

Okay, it was really an Alaska Air Flight (motto: you'll get there when we damn well feel like flying the plane) into Fairbanks.

Oddly, you get used to the sun almost setting at due north, then immediately heading up out of the same north it almost thought about setting in. It just cuts a full circle through the sky. The moon, though, does what it does in Topeka or Kalamazoo, comes and travels east-west. Odd, since you get so used to them tracking together at the lower latitudes, that the sun and moon are on such completely different paths up here. Again, like late Alaska Air flights, you get used to it.

I did however, actually take the picture during the seven minutes between ascent and descent when you can use devices powered by a single AAA battery. I must admit, the FAA treats science like voodoo when it comes to airplanes . . .

FAA Guy: "Let's see, airplanes fly through lightning, right?"

Other FAA Guy: "Yup."

FAA Guy: "So, we should be really, really worried that someone is using a device that emits 1/10,000,000th of that energy, right?

Other FAA Guy: "Yup. Can't regulate lightning, but we can make 'em turn off a digital camera."

FAA Guy: "Yup."

Other FAA Guy: "Sure wish we could regulate lightning."

I've been in a commercial plane and seen lightning hit the wing. Since I was
a. 18, and
b. drinking
I thought it was cool. Now, I'm just glad that the engineers who designed that plane had a chance to design a few B-17's first.

Speaking of which, good thing our flyboys back in World War II didn't have I-Pods. The Germans wouldn't have had to shoot us down, our bombers would have just fallen out of the sky because Horace from Michigan was listening to the Andrews Sisters singing "Rum and Coca Cola" and Ebeneezer from Florida was listening to Benny Goodman's "In The Mood."

America. Saved from totalitarianism by a dearth of compact electronic devices.