A Short Rant about HUMANS (whilst on SFO to LAS)

I write this under cover of darkness, hoping the people sat next to me don't read it. Why? And why is it dark? The answer to both questions is this: because they have shut the window blind.

Why the feck to people do this? I understand if a) it is a red eye /night flight and the sun is due to come up and wake you, or b) because it's so hot you want to shut the heat out; fine. If you're sleeping or hot, close it. 

But in this case the flight is tiny-short: San Francisco to Las Vegas. I am on the aisle and two people are next to me toward the window. The man sitting in the middle is, I think, a nervous flier, and his wife seems to have closed her window to help with this. The effect being you can't see the horizon, and every bump and jolt caused by the air systems over the Nevada mountains is felt even more. If you get travel sick, look at the horizon! Otherwise you are basically giving your brain nothing to balance against. It would be like getting in a roller coaster an choosing to blindfold yourself: so much worse.

I also wonder, apart from sleep, why people ever shut the blinds anyway. And I think it's a basic human defence mechanism to stick our head in the sand. We cannot possibly comprehend how impressive, how wonderful, beautiful, and dangerous it is to be sitting inside a bullet shooting through the sky. That's what we're doing. We're doing something our species should never do. And whilst my pet rabbit is unable to comprehend what 'sitting in a car is' (she just thinks she's in a wobbly box of hell), we as humans are able to imagine. We are able to think and be in awe of what is happening to us - our relativity to other objects like the earth, or in this case….

The Golden Gate Bridge as you leave SFO or at the very least (depending on which side of the plane you are sitting) the Bay Bridge, San Fransisco Bay and the coast which hosts the most (Silicon Valley).  The edge of the beautiful Yosemite, the Sierra National Forrest, then up into the mountains- Mount Witney revealing the stark and stunning desert of Death Valley, in such contrast with the lush California mountains. Then, after the planes of Death Valley the rise again of the mountains surrounding Las Vegas – mount Charleston (where Sarah and I got married!) – before the air systems make the plane just a little bumpy and you drop along with the temperature down into the adult Disneyland in the middle of the desert.  There’re so many stunning things to see, how can it possibly be beaten?

Open The Blind.