Flight

I've flown more in the last year than I have in the previous three combined. I'm not jetting off to exotic locales, but riding regional jets to places like Charlotte and Chicago en route to Lexington.

While the experience is still impressive — the roar of engines, the compression of space and time, the glide through clouds — there is, as any frequent flier knows, much to dislike about modern air travel. The last trip to Kentucky brought several of these to the fore: the crowding, the delays, the crazy and demeaning check-in process. Sometimes you have to remove your shoes and sometimes you don't. Why is that?

All this is to say that the other day, as I watched a jet stream in the sky, I was ready to start rhapsodizing about the freedom of flight, being above the clouds, the amazement of it all. Then I remembered Monday evening in Chicago — a couple hundred people waiting on a single flight attendant. Or the delay a few weeks ago in Lexington when the airport ran out of de-icing fluid.

Suddenly, I was back in 11 B, knees knocking up against the seat in front of me, stomach churning, certain we would never, ever reach O'Hare Airport.

Next time I glimpse a plane in flight, I'll imagine the people inside, legs cramped, palms sweating, heads aching. It may seem they've "slipped the surly bonds of earth" ... but they haven't.