Figuring I’ll consider trip posts a grab bag of mixed-media blog entries. Meaning that carrying around the memo books for the daytime stuff while putting around, and logging things when I can online. (ed. note: I forgot what having a portable computer was like. goodness, this is nice.)

For now, a few thoughts from 30,000 feet.

If I had to guess, I’d say I’m currently somewhere over the Sierras, but I can’t be sure. My geographical awareness faded somewhere between Santa Barbara and San Francisco, partly because the plane banked to where I couldnt follow the shoreline, partly because the idea of not craning my neck and watching the Avengers instead was particularly enticing, and partly because I have absolutely no idea what cities look like north of Gaviota.

Our flight was delayed from LAX, which meant we had to hurry to the next gate in San Francisco to catch our connecting flight to Philadelphia. I don’t know much about the process of getting onto a flight (this is my fifth ever trip on an airplane in nearly a quarter century of my earthly residence), but we had to get our bags checked by TSA before we got into the upholstered portable tunnel-hallway thing leading to the airport. Maybe I’m just inexperienced but I had to get my carry-on backpack and laptop bag thoroughly checked by a TSA agent, which I thought was weird, especially considering that they spent a good amount of time more rifling through my bags than they did to Ian’s. I feel like I’m being a bit paranoid but I also feel like I’m not.

On a related note, the song that got stuck in my head while flying over Monterey County (I think) was mewithoutYou’s Bullet to Binary (Pt. 2), which features a passage from a prayer sung in Arabic. I decided I probably shouldn’t sing that song until we get out of the airport in Philadelphia, which left me feeling kind of bummed.

Less heavy: why is the interior of the airplane called a cabin? Gonna have to look up the etymology of that one when I get an internet connection. Absent that, I’m stuck imagining Abe Lincon’s abode with 757 wings, cruising over the Ohio.

Oh boy, in the time between me confidently writing “30,000 feet” up there in paragraph two and me writing that last one, the pilot decided to descend to find “smoother air” (we’re in some pretty gnarly turbulence at the moment). Does he have no respect for the airplane blogging process? How can my audience ever trust me if they find out I’m misrepresenting my altitude?

I wish I could take my shoes off. I can, but actually, I can’t, because earlier my FitBit notified me that I hit my step goal for the day.

I’m going to try and doze off to The Avengers now, because after all the work I took transfering it from my external hard drive to my macbook to my old phone to my microsd card and finally to my chromebook, I learned that United offers it (and Age of Ultron!) for free through their app/in-flight entertainment package thing (which, ironically(?) doesn’t work on my chromebook).

Okay wait, one last thought - Age of Ultron is a bad title for the second MCU Avengers film. Yeah, I know the comic event was titled Age of Ultron, but they bear no resemblance save Ultron being the villain. The comic had Ultron taking over Earth by controlling Vision from the Ultron-ruled semi-distant future (oh, sorry, uh…spoilers?), so the time travel/time control(?) based aspects warrant the “Age” nomenclature. But the movie? Ultron has the upper hand for all of, what, a week? A fortnight, tops? That’s not an age. That’s a bad vibranium bender.