Aeroplane

Well, this is going to be a little fun.

I’m sitting at a near abandoned airport gate, waiting to board the smallest public flight in my life. Faint muzac plays just barely audible over the whir of the air conditoning. It has been so long since I was last in an airport I had forgotten to wear easily removable shoes. Between work, sleep deprivation, and general excitement for this trip, I decided the first thing I had to do once I had found my gate was get some caffeine in me. This was a daunting task, it turned out. They have machines with card readers, but it seems they don’t like to work without a cell connection to their mainframe, I suppose. Undeterred, I went to an ATM, and withdrew a bit of cash. With bills too large to be accepted by the machine, I tried to make change out of a machine which did not want to work with me either. Frustrated, I went to the nearest actual Starbuck's kiosk, expecting them to tell me that my money was no good either. Fortunately, I was able to walk away with a large frappucino.

Waiting for the boarding to occur, I made a single serving friend with a fellow passenger, on his way to pick up a truck. A mystery man sits in the back of the aircraft, and a woman just across from my SSF, presumably a native of my destination, Kirksville, Missouri. We are flying in a six seater dual engine aircraft, a Piper Navajo, model pa31-350. We have leveled off at 8150 feet, flying at a steady 150 knots. The lovely thing is as I stare as these little black keys, we are actually flying low enough to catch glimpses of the earth through the sporadic cloud cover. We must still be closer to St. Louis, because I either just saw some sort of refinery, or the Science Center.

This is a multipurpose trip which happily came together. Barely. My best friend, mentioned in a recent post, has finished his education at AT Stills University. His life is progressing and happily bringing him back to St. Louis, for the time being. I was there to help move him to Kirksville, and now I am en route to help move him back. I’m excited for it. On the way back to StL, we are going to stop through our college town, and of course, see a couple of the important alma mater sights, and coincidentally, the old bike shop. As a gift to my astounding Dr. Girlfriend, I spent some of my recent superfluous overtime earnings on an Electra Boney Finger 3i. Electra is one of the last companies that actually builds a quality cruiser bike in the United States, and it so happens that not only am I a fan of Electra, but my mechanic is a dealer of them (this might be a causal relationship, come to think of it.) As mentioned earlier, I will happily do my business through him for the rest of my life. Hell, if I have enough left by the end of this biking season, I may just purchase another cruiser for myself. They are quite baddass, and pictures will follow. Oh yes, there will be pics.

Hell of a bit of turbulence when you’re in something this size. Not my first time on a small aircraft, just my first time on a small land plane, not a sea plane. Experiences from my trips on those will come later. This trip nearly didn’t happen because I was scheduled to work almost all the way until the wire's edge of timing. I was barely able to get to the airport with time to spare for my check-in. I’m quite glad to be flying. The ticket cost was a fraction of the gas cost, and the transit time just over a third of what it would have been if I had driven. We’re beginning our descent now, after a 50 minute flight, at 175 knots, -650 feet per minute.

If you were bored by reading this, I’m not sorry. I find this exciting as hell. Flying web log post. Started in an airport, written during a flight, and finished on the ground

Quite a respite, a fleeting flight.

-The0