The day before…

There was one available free upgrade to business class on our flight to Miami from SFO.  I’m sitting in row 11 in the window seat with a bulkhead instead of a window.  My backpack is on the floor cramping my space; all the overheads were full even though I was in boarding group one.  The row is full; we are snug.  The person in the middle seat is larger than average. Only two and a half hours left in our flight.  Soon I will finish the second half of the wrap I bought at SFO.  I feel pretty good as I just stretched by legs and took a bathroom break.  I also visited the poor souls confined to row number three.  Pat introduced me to her seat mate who gave her the names of four good restaurants in Lima.

Sometimes as we are about to takeoff I wonder that we can do this, hurl a massive aircraft skyward and make our way flawlessly across the country.  Yes, I’m squeezed but the experience of getting to Miami using this method far surpasses any other, with the exception of imagination, which is faster and maybe easier to control.

I can lean forward and peak through the crevice of the forward window and see farmlands, towns and waterways down below.  All the inhabitants and all the creatures go about their daily lives unaware and unconcerned about the several hundred of us rocketing across their airspace.  I started reading An Immense World by Ed Yong.  It’s about how animals perceive the world.  It is well written and very interesting.  In a chapter on vision, I learned that a certain species of jumping spiders (these are active hunters as opposed to most spiders that sit on their webs waiting to feel vibrations of their prey).   The jumping spiders have four sets of eyes; two in the front are the best, they also have two on each side and two in the back of their heads.  The front ones focus, the others detect movement.  The spider coordinates input from the different sets of eyes to jump on its prey.  If the motion-detecting side eyes are covered, the spider cannot track its prey and goes hungry; the two types of sensors are both required for successful living.

The Miami temperature should be 87 degrees when we arrive.  With the humidity it is projected to feel like 100 degrees.  The air and water temperature at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo will be equal at 87 degrees.  Tomorrow we are going on a boat trip to the reef, five miles off shore to snorkel.

Flying over the northern edge of the Gulf of Mexico, you can see very low sandy islands off the coast of Louisiana and, I assume, Mississippi.  To call them barrier islands would be generous.  Some look like wispy cirrus clouds.  Often there will be more land, with a bit of vegetation on the Eastward end with the westward side stretching out to the west like a long thin kite tail.  It makes me think that the prevailing current is counterclockwise so that sand particles are pulled from the East and dropped in long lines to the West.

We are getting closer; the last ‘service” has been completed and they’ve picked up my empty wrap container.  The crew is now much more insistent about turbulence, announcing that the seat belt sign is turned on with the slightest of bumps.  Recent injuries from extreme turbulence no doubt are causing this very cautious approach.  Even on a flight of more than five hours the only substantial food offered in coach was a cheese and fruit tray.  And this was only offered on the first “service”; they announced that there was no food (or alcohol) on the second go round.  Another more cautious approach.

They have iguanas in Miami.