In the Air…

We are now on the plane! They’ve really changed tremendously over the years. The stewardesses are now called “flight attendants” and they aren’t all women anymore. For just $2 you can get headphones and listen to their radio. Each seatback has a screen that plays music, and on the planes that don’t, it’s in the armrests. The armrests only have music and no screen, though, since you couldn’t fit a screen in it. The seatback screens do more than music. You can watch TV and movies, play games and even get flight info that’s incredible! There’s a map that showed the plane’s progress as it flew just over the Oregon border into Washington, then Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and finally into Atlanta, Georgia which is the busiest hub in the US.

Planes have certainly gotten a lot faster than the 450 MPH they used to fly. We’re flying at 650 MPH now. Isn’t that almost supersonic? We’ve traveled 779 miles and are at an altitude of 34,979’. We’re on Delta, by the way.

I just figured out how to load up a list of ’70s songs. It is so cool!

Ugh! It’s -50º outside the plane!

The train ride consisted of some very pacific northwestern scenery. There was much more snow, like in New England, the higher up into the mountains we went. It was nothing but huge peaks and valleys of snowy pines and firs, with an occasional stream running through here and there. I can see myself thinking the snow looked cool had I grown up in a warm climate, but I’d never want to live in it!

The conductors wore old-fashioned uniforms, and one of them was weird in a funny way, high-fiving us as we were approaching Portland. I guess this train normally runs back and forth from L.A. to Seattle. During the ride, we stopped in Smalt, Albany, Salem and Eugene.

Some brat of a kid got on my nerves in the end and wouldn’t shut up. I used my earplug so as not to suck the iPod out of too much juice too soon, but I could still hear the damn thing, just not as well. That’s another way flying’s changed – the planes are chock full of screaming animals, and of course, none of the mothers care to do a damn thing about it. I don’t know how they can sit there in total oblivion, but they refuse to teach their kids any manners or respect. I was shocked they didn’t let them run up and down the isles on the planes, though they did somewhat on the trains. Due to long car rides costing about the same in gas as flying does, more animals are flying because it’s faster. I don’t understand why the damn animals aren’t in school, though most of them do seem to be preschoolers.