Off we went into the wild blue yonder

(Homer's thoughts) Oh, glory of glories. Oh heavenly testament to the eternal majesty of God's creation. (Out  loud) Holy macaroni!

Homer Simpson, Treehouse of Horrors VI

I had several conversations today about how friggin' cool a smart phone is. Here's a picture I took with my smart phone, that I suppose I could have taken with any digital camera. However, I wouldn't normally have had a camera in my pocket at that moment:

In the past, my camera would have been in my luggage. But since my phone is also my music player, I had it while I was looking out the window at 30,000 feet.

For some reason, most travellers I know don't like the window seat. They prefer the convenience of being able to stretch whenever they want, and not needing to ask others to move so they can use the restroom. But, perhaps because I fly so infrequently, I like looking out the window. There's something amazing about looking at the roofs of buildings, then broad patches of land, then seeing clouds and the shadows they cast, and finally reaching the height where the clouds look like a strange all-white landscape. At one point we flew through a thunderstorm, which did generate a little turbulence, but also made a fascinating viewing experience. The sky darkened and it seemed like we were driving through fog. 

Everything about air travel except the actual flying is, at best, annoying, and at worse uncomfortable. I don't feel more secure because I was asked to take off my shoes. I don't think that giving out 20-cent packages of pretzels or some other minor snack was really bankrupting the airlines, and they should resume that practice. I don't know why they think someone should pay them $8 extra to watch episodes of CSI Miami on a tiny screen.

But the flying itself wants to make you say holy macaroni.