Quiet night over the Third Planet.
Specifically, somewhere over West Texas.
So many red dots down there, flashing in unison. Thousands of them blanket West Texas, flashing like a bunch of Operation board games, kids failing to pull out the funny bone at the exact same time.
Oil rigs, in case you were wondering.
There are hundreds of miles of them, and they all flash at the same damn time!
And because of the nature of the speed of light, hundreds of miles of them, they all get to my eyes at the same time.
Imagine if you saw light like sound. Dopplering in and out with each flash. That would make it hard to focus, for sure.
It’s quiet now up here, and I think the flashing lights are in rhythm with my heartbeat.
We were to leave at 9 PM for our journey West.
Or niner, as we say. Nine sounds too close to five. Sometimes numbers are important.
If they were to say, “Watch out, you have traffic at your nine o’clock,” but I hear traffic at five o’clock, I’d think, well, that’s behind me. Why should I care? That’s on them.
Imagine the surprise when you look out. Hey, an airplane off my left wing. I wish they would have said something. I may not have spilt my coffee.
Did you know we in the business call five “fiphe,” with a PH, to make it sound less like nine?
Not many do… But I do.
It’s PHun.
Also, D is always Delta, right?
A is for Alpha
And B is for Buffalo Springfield
C is Charlie, of course.
Delta is D?
Not always.
All taxiways at the airport are given a letter or series of letters. Ground control to Major Tom will tell him to mosey over to the runway via: “Left on Alpha, right Tango, left Delta, follow the Southwest plane turning off Buffalo.”
Well, because there are so many Delta Airlines planes in Atlanta, ground control calls D “Dixie.”
Isn’t that charming?
“Make a left on Dixie. Follow the Delta plane.”
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
D is for Delta
Not phucking Dixie
Okay, where was I?
We were late.
My First Officer’s seat was broken. He broke it.
They go up and down and back and forth, and the lumbar goes in and out, and the thigh support goes hither and fro. His did all that, except for the up-and-down part. It was stuck all the way down.
He looked like a child.
It was pretty comical. He could hardly reach the buttons and switches and most of the important stuff.
He could hardly see over the dash!
I suggested a phone book.
Blocks on his shoes like in the Little Rascals.
Well, they got it fixed.
So off we went.
Until we didn’t.
It was supposed to be a five-hour flight.
Now it’s fiphe and a half.
Instead of straight like a Stork flies… weather ahead has us going all the way down to the Gulf and then making a right.
I’m glad we don’t use the stars to navigate.
I really didn’t want to go all the way to New Orleans.
We can always try to negotiate a shortcut.
But can we?
They had to give us more gas because of the longer journey.
And more gas means a heavier plane.
If I don’t burn all that gas, will I be too heavy to land?
Real concern.
We have a maximum landing weight.
Too heavy, and we run the risk of driving the landing gear struts up into the wings on landing.
But good news: that’s where the gas is, so doing so would puncture the tanks, and all that heavy gas would go away.
Math says we are fine to take a shortcut.
But!!
And a big butt here.
Look at that butt. She looks like one of those rap girls.
If we do take a shortcut, we will fly through White Sands, New Mexico, where they practice shooting missiles at things.
Like airplanes with hot engines that heat-seeking missiles like to focus on, like moths to light.
So there is that.
I’m interrupting this message to repeat what air traffic control said:
“Caution, pilots. There is unauthorized laser activity south of Lubbock.”
Some yahoo is down there shooting a laser at planes south of Lubbock.
To them, when they hit the windshield, we light up like a Lite-Brite because of the stuff inside our very thick windows.
To us, it looks like a beam of fire scorching our rods and cones.
So I look at the map.
Where are we?
South of Lubbock!
Naturally, we both look out of the plane for the unauthorized laser event.
Which is exactly what we are not supposed to do, but we always do.
I want to see the laser, and I want to see it now, Daddy.
“No laser, Veruca.”
Just lots of flashing red lights.
Those kids suck at Operation.