The experience flying the world

I’m going to start with a simple observation: air travel is about to get a lot more interesting. For the past few decades, it’s been getting less and less interesting. If you were to take a flight from San Francisco to New York in the 1950s, you would have crossed the continent in a sleek propeller plane, and possibly met some famous people along the way. If you took that same flight today, you would spend several hours in an aluminum tube with wings, and maybe watch part of a movie before getting off at your destination. It’s not necessarily bad—it’s just boring.

The future of air travel is going to be pretty exciting though, and that’s because we are finally starting to see some big changes in aircraft design. In fact, there are three big trends that will change how we fly: electric airplanes, supersonic jets and hypersonic jets. All of these technologies are still in their infancy, but they are all moving quickly towards commercialization.

Traveling the world is not an easy feat. It takes time, energy, money and a love of exploration to see some of the most amazing places on earth. The experience of traveling can be as much about the journey as it is about the destination, especially when it comes to air travel.

I’ve spent the last year of my life flying around the world. I’ve been on an airplane, on average, at least once every three days. I’ve spent more time in airports, and on planes, than I have in my own home.

I love to fly. It’s one of my favorite things to do. But there’s a lot that goes into flying—and flying frequently—that most people don’t know about. The experience is not seamless or simple, especially when you do it as often as I do. There are a lot of things that can go wrong.

I’ve written about this before (see my “How to Fly” series), but those posts were more about how to choose the best flight for your purposes, and give you some tips for making your experience better if you don’t fly very often. I’ll be writing more about that kind of thing soon enough, but today I want to write about some of the less-than-ideal things that happen when you take a lot of flights in a short period of time…

Flying is like driving, only faster. At least it is most of the time. One summer I flew more than 30,000 miles just on domestic flights.

I could have driven much of that distance, although it would have taken longer, and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to make the trip more than once a year. (And I haven’t been to Alaska or Hawaii.)

But the last thing I want to do is sit in my car for 31 hours. And even if you somehow did drive that much in a year, you wouldn’t get to see as much of the country as I did from up above.

Here are some things I saw during some of my flights:

* Clouds looking like a herd of sheep after a fresh rain in Oregon

* A giant field of solar panels outside Los Angeles

* A rare sight: a passenger plane leaving contrails over Las Vegas

* The wild fires from central California extending hundreds of miles inland from the coast

* The Umpqua River Valley looking like one giant vineyard

* The Rocky Mountains with snowpack below average for late July

* A thunderstorm over Kansas City which looked like a giant octopus with its tentacles reaching out toward me

* A clear

Cumulus clouds, with their tufted tops, are the most common type of cloud. They are often part of a larger system of clouds. These clouds form in layers or patches and have a cumuliform structure. The base of the cloud is often very thick and measures up to 2,000 meters in thickness. These clouds are generally pure white in appearance and do not exhibit any shading or coloring. The height of the cloud may be anywhere between 1 and 5 kilometers above sea level. Cumulus clouds generally indicate a change in weather, but they could also mean that there is fair weather approaching.

Cumulonimbus clouds are thunderclouds which form vertically. The cloud has a flat base and measures over 5 km in height. These clouds carry a lot of moisture and can produce heavy rainfall accompanied by thunder and lightning. These clouds may appear as dense dark masses or have an anvil-like shape which spreads out horizontally from the base of the cloud.

Cirrus clouds are thin high-altitude clouds that appear as wispy white bands in the sky. They develop at altitudes ranging from 5 to 13 km above sea level and occur singly or in patches or lines consisting of various shapes and sizes. Cirrus means ‘tu

This blog is a continuation of my journey through the world of aviation. The blog will be primarily focused on domestic flights in the United States; however, I do intend to include international flights when possible.

I’ve been flying since I was 17 years old, and have always enjoyed the experience. My early experiences included flight training with a small Cessna 152, and then later with a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Now I work for the United States Air Force as an aircraft mechanic, and fly almost daily. Since joining the Air Force, I’ve flown over 50 different aircraft including fighters, trainers, bombers, and transports.

I hope that you enjoy this blog, and that it inspires you to take to the skies!

At the end of last year, I was on a flight from Tokyo to JFK, and sitting next to me was a young woman in her 20s who had just come from India.

She told me that she had spent several months traveling around the country and it was one of the most amazing, eye-opening experiences of her life. As we talked about our travels, she asked me what my favorite trip was (a question I am always asked) and I said mine was when I went to India myself. She couldn’t get over how much we both loved visiting India, and she asked me why other people don’t seem to hear about it more often.

I tried my best to explain that there is so much more to India than most people think — that it’s not just slums, poverty and elephants. But she didn’t understand why India wasn’t on everyone’s bucket list. After all, she said, it has everything: history, culture, beaches, mountains and a fascinating mix of religions. She then proceeded to tell me how much fun she had learned to surf in Goa and how beautiful the Himalayas were.

When I got home that night I started thinking about my time in India and realized that although it had been 10 years