August 15, 2003

Things I learned on my first business trip

• A lot more people fly during the week than I thought, and about 80% of them are flying alone.
• These people drink while waiting on their flights and they talk to each other a lot.
• Taking off from an enormous plane is paralyzingly scary if you are familiar with elementary physics.
• From the air, most towns are very pretty and sincere-looking, with a splash of loneliness added in at the last moment.
• Oil fields are very lonely places, and you can smell them from a long way off.
• Living in a big city you get the impression that most of the country is crowded just because you think what you experience is the norm, but most of the country is empty.
• One could say that a lot of people are empty as well.
• Small planes can turn more easily, and scare you half to death when they turn quickly and drop altitude for the landing.
• It is very difficult to control your own mind - when the body is put in a stressful situation in which it thinks it will be harmed or die, you end up fighting your own nerves more than the actual danger.
• The smell of your own sweat is familiar, but when it is sweat that is created because of fear, it smells different - intoxicating after the fact.
• Jesus will come to you if you call him, and he is all that can calm you down.

August 15, 2003 02:34 PM