LAX to Auckland

Our 777 stood parallel to the active runway and I could look across the 100-meter space to the preceding plane, waiting to take off, when suddenly i was hit by what felt like a wall of sound and power that shook our fuselage.  The enormous, ungainly white planebegan to roll past my window, and as we rotated onto the runway, i could see that earlier plane already  disappearing west through the last bit of dusk and out over the blueblack Pacific night.

As we began our rollout and our lumpish mass of metal, electronics and humans moved faster and faster, lights on the buildings along the runaway seemingly began to move past us, transforming them from pragmatically squat airport service facilities into  into beautiful streaking patterns of abstract light.  The tires released the runway and we were out over the deep black Pacific night. Only the dull unchanging roar of the engines and the flickering wingtip lights indicated something out there beyond my darkened window.

In those moments between releasing the brakes and at last lifting off, are the pilots at all conscious of their enormous burden of
responsibility -- the lives and webs of relationships of hundreds on the plane, not to mention of those on the ground -- just behind the cockpit door?

Very early in the morning there's brief time when the rising sun, following us west from yesterday, illuminates the engine cowling and lights up the small red Qantas kangroo logo........

                                        

 

                                                     Pacific dawn two hours east of Auckland  NZ

The sheer immensity and mystery of the Pacific........hours and hours of enormous emptiness, with only the transient clouds to mark passage across that deep blue edge of the world.  As many times as i've made this long flight, i love the sense of being seemingly timelessly suspended above this great void.  Floating on the edge of space, I think can see the curvature of the earth:

These Pacific clouds look like they've been pulled up from the surface of the water, stretching away to the horizon...

                                                               A tasty and welcome brekkie courtesy of Qantas

And we're approaching my beloved New Zealand.........feet dry and soft rolling hills pass under us.  I feel home even though I still have 12 hours to go.....

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton