Spring Break

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip

That started from this desert town aboard this flying ship

Oh, Phoenix is an arid place, and here the sun is bright

Two passengers took off that day for a three hour flight

A three hour flight

An unexpected rainstorm came, the runways all were wet

And air control, unused to this, couldn’t help but fret

They said, "Between each flight we need a little extra time."

The plane sat on the taxiway, the last in a long, long line

The last in a long, long line

The Phoenix area is not a particularly moist region of the country. In fact, we recently had a record-breaking dry spell, lasting 143 days. While the city's water supply wasn't particularly in danger--at least, I didn't hear too many public service announcements asking us to conserve it--the lack of rain has caused the vegetation around the city to become very dry, leading to a risk of severe wildfires.

But of course, while I'm glad it finally rained, I'm a little annoyed that the one day I was flying out of Phoenix was the day it had to happen. I looked out my window the first morning of spring break to discover that it had rained during the night. This is the courtyard of the complex where I live. It was odd to see it wet.

'A' Mountain on a rainy day

Wet Gammage parking lot

My brother Craig and I set off to the airport. My friend Brandon drove us, which was quite kind of him. Unfortunately, his defroster was broken, so to keep the windshield clear, we had to leave the windows open. Naturally, my leg got pretty wet. When we got to the airport, we saw incredibly long lines at the baggage check-in, most likely because everyone else was flying out for spring break. Craig and I congratulated ourselves for packing carry-ons and checking in online the day before.

When our plane pulled up to the gate, we noticed something rather...odd.






The back of the plane was a yellow and black checkerboard pattern, while the front was red and white. It turns out that the plane was painted in honor of the state of Maryland. More specifically, the flag of Maryland, which looks like this:



Riding in an interesting plane like this, however, did not ameliorate the annoyance of a delayed flight. Not only did the plane arrive late in Phoenix, causing us to board about half an hour later than scheduled, Phoenix airport apparently gets as freaked out by rain as Phoenix drivers do. They'd spaced out takeoffs farther than is typical at the airport. This led to us sitting on the taxiway for quite some time.

So, bored out of my mind, I started taking pictures.

The cool thing about this picture is that you can see the tail of another airplane reflected upside-down in the droplets on the window. The other cool thing is that if you set this as your desktop background, it looks like your computer is a window. If you want to try this for yourself, I recommend using a larger size, which you can get here. Right-click on the image and select "Set as wallpaper."




More taxiing.





It took so long that Craig fell asleep. Awww, isn't he cute? He didn't even wake up when I took a flash photograph.



At last! The runway!




Up we go!




We flew very close to ASU. Here's what the campus looks like from the air. Click the pictures to see a bigger version.





We flew through a particularly thick layer of clouds. It took several minutes. Looking out the window and seeing nothing but white mist is a little odd. Sometimes when I'm flying through clouds I imagine that we're flying through hyperspace, or some other bizarre dimension. Why, yes, I do read too much science fiction. However did you know?




Mountain ranges



And as a finale, a weird cloud formation.

Anyhow, we landed at the Portland airport a couple of hours after we were originally supposed to land. This put our landing just a few minutes before Craig's girlfriend's landing. So he stayed at the gate to welcome her. He was excited about surprising her, since he wouldn't normally be able to see her at the gate. So there I was, walking quickly toward security. And what do I see but my mom waving frantically at me to stay where I was. I stop, and she points at her cell phone. While I'm digging through my bag to find mine (which I hadn't turned back on yet), the security guy asks if I need some help. I explain the situation to him. Meanwhile, Mom's decided to just yell at me from the other side of security. Turns out she wants me to get Craig's luggage from him.

I'm sure we were the highlight of Security Guy's day. I think it's funny; Mom feels a little guilty. Really, Mom, it's okay!

And that's how I got home for spring break. Tune in next week when I'll talk about some of the highlights of my vacation.

In this post, I was experimenting with posting photos in my blog. I'm still working out how to make the layout look good when I use HTML. Sorry for the mess!