3:46pm Seattle:

Just SE of Anchorage. Am flying United Airlines, and they have small video monitors in the seat backs for watching in flight films, but which also shows info about the flight such as time in transit, miles covered, and altitude. 34,000 feet altitude, 898 km/hour. Plus position/progress on a map. This is cool mid-flight. It is rather disturbing during take off. For some reason being 200 feet off the ground is much more disturbing than being 34,000 feet off the ground. And then maybe there’ll be a moment when the plane will go from 170 feet to 163 feet then back up to 200. What was that? (I remember it quite vividly. Song of the moment is “Hey St. Peter” by Flash & the Pan. As far as flights go, thisisn’t bad. A fair amount of turbulence but nothing too bad yet. In the past I’ve often noticed that when I fly into or out of Seattle, approximately 80% of the time it’s raining, if only for the few minutes it takes the plane to land. Now approximately due south of Anchorage. It is Seattle, but even so it seems unlikely statistically. It didn’t rain this morning but as the bus drove up to Seatac, at one moment Mount Rainier was perfectly framed looking huge, majestic, snow-capped and what not. The hotels somehow managed to be perfectly placed so as not to interrupt the sight line. It reminded me of the thousands of depictions I’ve seen of Mt. Fuji. There’s a huge group of teenagers of various ages on the plane; I understand it’s a 4H group going to Japan for a month. There was a blond boy, I’d guess 17-ish, who struck up a conversation in the duty-free store (side note: $26 for a carton of Dunhills - yee-bloody-hah!) And then in the seating area at the gate. When I mentioned I was going to visit a male friend he quickly absented himself. It was sweet. If I was ten years younger I’d have been thrilled. Even so; good for the ol’ morale. Song of the moment: “White Lines” by Grandmaster Flash. I was trying to save my iPod battery as I won’t be able to charge it for 12-14 hours. Eh, fuck it. This is why I bought it. I think that kid’s youth rubbed off on me. I got carded for a drink on the plane and the cart moved on before I could find my ID. Plain orange juice?! And then the same flight attendant came up to me later and told me my top was cut too low and showing too much cleavage. I didn’t quite understand what she said so I’m not sure whether she was offended or trying to be helpful. Nearly three hours into the flight, southwest of Anchorage, past Kenai. Song of the moment: “Big Gun” by Ice T.