The joys of flying

I love how it feels to fly.  I love being in an airplane over the farms and cities of the United States.  I love trying to guess at which point a plane has reached the necessary velocity to achieve a good liftoff from the ground and I love trying to guess when the plane is flat enough and slow enough to achieve a good smooth landing.  I love when I get a seat on an airplane that is right behind first class so that I have a ton of leg room.

I also love seeing that I am in row 9 and knowing that I will again be in the front of the airplane.

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I don't love delays that are over an hour long. 

I don't love being taken to a different part of the tarmac to be let out in front of a plane that is so small that it still has propellers and looks like some sort of Tonka toy.

I don't like that the plane is so small and dainty looking that I spend much of the flight making sure I can still see row 4 - location of the emergency exit.

I don't like that I also spend much of the flight determining which of the people in the 5 rows in front of me I can beat or take out in order to get to the exit row quickly.

I do not like getting on said small plane and realizing that it is so small that row 9 is actually the LAST ROW of the entire plane.

I don't like being seated in the middle of that last row (five seats straight across like a couch) with my body not protected by a seat in front of me.  I don't like that I fear that the plane is so small that I fear that my body will be hurled through the aisles upon some sort of inevitable malfunction and I will land in the lap of the flight attendant who sits facing me throughout the entire flight - no snacks, no drinks, just her strapped to a small chair facing me the whole flight.

I do not like when my normal sized backpack does not fit in the over head bins.

I do not like when the plane is so small that the tires come out of the wings and not the underside of the plane.

I do not like when the plane, due to the delays, is stuck on the runway for 17 minutes and the engine is so powerful on such a large plane that the plane continues to rock side to side for the entire 17 minutes until we start forward motion again.

I don't like when the plane starts its decent and each lowering motion brings that stomach-moving up in your innards feeling even when there is no cloud turbulence.

I do like that I made it alive to NYC and get to spend some time with Kid Sis #1, though.