Unsurprisingly my trip from JFK to Anchorage was defined by mass confusion. My flight was scheduled to leave at 7 am, so I decided the best course of action was to skip the whole sleeping thing, leave my apartment by four, and get to the airport with time to spare. Well, I thought I had accomplished this, but when I made my way to the check in counter around six I was told that I couldn’t get on for reasons I’m still unsure about. Something about it being full, but I was too tired to comprehend anything. I was told to come back at 9:30 to get a flight that would take me to Atlanta, where I would fly to Seattle and then to Anchorage. It seemed to be a bit round about, but I was told it was my only option.
Now my biggest concern was not falling asleep and missing my 9:30 appointment. I struggled through by playing solitaire on my iPod, which wasn’t very exciting and drained my battery fairly successfully. Finally I made my way back to the check in counter and tried once more to board a flight. Well, the original lady who “helped” me was gone, and the new lady didn’t seem to understand what was going on—of course it didn’t help that I had no clue either. She decided the best course of action was for me to switch back to my original flight plan of Salt Lake City to Anchorage, which wouldn’t leave until 5. Now I had seven hours to kill, which was spent largely watching a news loop on CNN Headline News with short, uncomfortable naps. Probably the most exciting thing to happen was a short story about a bear caught in Carbon County (hometown pride!).
Finally at 4:30 I boarded a plane! I managed to get a window seat and the girl next to me, who was from Idaho, asked me to point out the Statue of Liberty. The best I could do was point to a small island with a tiny speck sticking out of it. Flying over the city is always pretty incredible. There are just so many people living in or around the city. Once we got about half way across PA everything turned to farmland—the immensity of which was also astounding. Basically every bit of land was used for farming. It’s hard to imagine that not even three hundred years ago all of that land was undeveloped.
Of course one can look at and philosophize over farm development for so long, so I managed to get a good bit of reading done as well. I brought two books with me: “Genesis: the Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin” by Robert M. Hazen and “Death in the Afternoon” by Ernest Hemingway. The former is an inside account of the current scientific study of emergence theory, which tries to explain how organic molecules (an organic molecule is any molecule that contains carbon; amino acids, proteins, DNA, ect are all organic molecules) could have formed and combined to form larger macromolecules which could be considered alive. It’s a really interesting read, though I still haven’t managed to finish it. Just the scientific debate about what constitutes life is worthy of reading about. There are a lot of theories that are explored in the book, some of which are extremely out there, but one of the more beautiful theories about the origin of organic molecules on Earth is that they came from space. Large clouds of atoms exist in space. These clouds only have about a million atoms per cubic inch, but solar radiation excites these atoms and they can combine to form molecules. As Hazen writes “Eventually, under the pervasive inward pull of gravity, local regions of a molecular cloud can collapse into a new planetary system with a central massive star and an array of planets and moons. As each body forms, a steady rain of organic-rich comets and asteroids contributes to the life-forming inventory. So, the theorists tell us, organic molecules inevitable constitute part of any planet-forming mix.” I really can’t wait to finish the book.
The second book is Hemingway’s view of Spanish bullfights. Anyone who has read anything by Hemingway (and if you haven’t, or have only read “The Old Man and the Sea, stop reading this right now and start reading Hemingway instead. It’s a much better use of your time) knows that he loves bull fighting. I wasn’t sure how I would respond to the book, and I only read the first 40 pages or so, but Hemingway is very unapologetic about his love. He knows that many people will not share his view, but he definitely paints a romantic picture of the fights and culture of bullfights. It’s a very informative book, but I doubt I’ll be going to any bullfights soon. Probably the most interesting part of the book to me was when Hemingway briefly mentions his interest in suicides.
So those are my book reviews. Other then reading, looking at farmland, and watching one episode of the Office, my flight was uneventful, though the Rocky Mountains were absolutely stunning. Also very stunning was Salt Lake City. We flew into the airport over a long stretch of salt marsh. Out of my window was a long strip of development maybe a mile or two wide situated between the mountains and the marsh. At the same time we were landing the sun was getting close to setting so all of the water was a nice pinkish color. It was very picturesque. Unfortunately the sun was close to setting because of the strong headwind we were flying to, which meant that I had all of seven minutes to catch my connecting flight. We unloaded in section A and my plane was located in section D. The airport was shaped like a giant U with A being one end and D being the other. So I had a nice run and made it with a minute or two to spare.
The flight from Salt Lake to Anchorage wasn’t very exciting due to darkness and cloudiness, though once again I had gotten a window seat and was in charge of saving everyone’s lives if the plane crashed by opening the emergency exit. Alas, my services were not needed and we made it to Anchorage, where it was brighter at midnight then it was at 9:30 in Salt Lake. So through the magic of time changes I had taken off from JFK at 5 and landed in Anchorage a little after 12. Not too bad. However I was extremely exhausted and by the time I received by checked luggage it was nearly 2, but I had finally made it and got some sleep (I don’t want to do the math on how long it was since I had proper sleep).
Tune in later for details on my first day in Alaska!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment