March 31, 2009
I really love planes. I marvel at them. I don’t go so far as to know timetables or go to the airport on weekends, but I certainly have a fascination, and every time I drive to Sydney I have to concentrate on watching the road instead of looking for aircraft as we pass Kingsford Smith. Part of it is that planes are inherently interesting to me, and part of it is that they are associated with exciting travel.
Australia is so remote and large that to go to any other country requires at least three and a half hours on a plane. So it’s lucky that I enjoy it so much! I take geeky interest in the altitude and ground speed displays, and I am smugly satisfied when I predict simple things like when the rumble of the landing gear will appear on a descent.
It’s wonderful to see the world from such a different angle, too. The challenge of photographing interesting sights from behind glass at altitude is interesting, because not only do things move past surprisingly fast, and haze shows up over distance, but inevitably someone’s slept on the window pane and left it grubby.
Looking back through the archives, it turns out that I’ve posted quite a few pictures from planes before. You can find them here, here, here, here, here, and a really old one here. Phew!