Thursday, July 23, 2009 - Departure!

The journey of a lifetime began today. Vinay and I departed from Will Rogers Airport at 12:55 pm and arrived in Chicago 1 hour and 43 minutes later. It was quite a breathtaking experience.

Flying in an airplane is wonderful. The opportunity to board an aircraft has only happened to me once before – over 5 years ago. I remember how exhilarating it was to view the world from such a different perspective. Today was filled with no less emotion as our plane conquered higher and higher altitudes. With each altitude, the houses grew smaller and the cars became punier until the earth’s landscape resembled an intricately plotted computer chip. It flabbergasts and amazes me that human intelligence developed the technology to soar amongst the clouds. From the airplane window, even the clouds stopped me in moments of wonder! Endless fields of cotton balls and cotton candy folding and unfolding. Only God can be behind such wonders as airplanes and clouds.

I spent most of this flight musing about such things and gleefully revealing my enthusiasm to Vinay every few seconds. He is not sure how to respond to my zeal.

Once we arrived in Chicago, I felt like a kid at a zoo. My eyes didn’t know where to look. Never had I encountered so many airplanes in one location. Inside the airport, I was greeted by a cacophony that far surpassed that of Will Rodgers. Immediately I decided that airports are wonderful places. They are an intoxicating hub filled with the sights and smells of human diversity. Here is my favorite picture of the Chicago airport that demonstrated just this :




Vinay took this picture of me in front of the largest touch screen monitor I have ever seen. All I had to do was touch a city and the current weather conditions materialized before my eyes. Incredible!



And here is a picture of me writing this post while we waited.

Two hours and one musketeer candy bar later, we board our flight for London.
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Or so we thought.

Actually, inclement weather conditions kept us waiting at the airport for an additional hour. This was a great concern because once we arrived in London, we had only a short layover before boarding a different airline for India. If this plane delayed us by much, there was a chance we would miss our flight from London to Mumbai.

But fortunately, that didn’t happen.

We boarded the 7 hour and 45 minute flight to London. Instantly, I was stunned by the distinct differences in aircrafts. The American Eagle that flew us to Chicago had been incredibly small. It is still unclear to me how all the passengers were able to fit in the first place. This second plane, a Boeing 777, was a mammoth in comparison. Being the inexperienced traveler, and never having flown internationally before, I was deeply impressed and excited by the individual monitors located behind each seat. They apparently provided movies, music, and games to each passenger. However, its best feature was a real-time mapping of our flight. I was able to see exactly which country we were flying over, what the current altitude was, and the current temperature outside the plane. Other important differences in the aircrafts included the roomer seats, and the blankets and pillows that were provided to us.

One significant thing to note about our flight to London – I saw the ocean for the first time! There is definitely a lot of water in the ocean.

With our late departure from Chicago and the change in time difference, we were not due to arrive in London until the following day. I studied my world geography on the amazing monitor and Vinay slept while we flew across the night sky.