32,000 feet surrounded by snoring people

SOMEWHERE OVER LAKE MICHIGAN, USA, 5 a.m. -- Admiral Fox and I spent our last day in Sacramento running all those last-minute errands that drive you mad: mailing things, losing things, and trying to stuff 250 lbs. of our possessions into four suitcases for checking.

Yes, each suitcase can only weigh 50 pounds. We had to get creative.

But that was hours back and at this moment we are tearing up the miles crossing the U.S. in a Jet Blue plane with the snoring of sleeping passengers almost as loud as the jet engines.

When I say tearing up the miles I am not kidding. The computer shows us hitting 700 mph in airspeed.

Move over Chuck Yeager, we are coming through.

Our destination now is JFK Airport where we (and we hope our checked bags) will hop a second flight to Syracuse where a rental car awaits to take us to our new Tranquility Base in Watkins Glen. I have high hopes it will not be another Nissan Cube.

This air flight is a little quicker than when I made this trip west in August of 1970 in a VW bus that would only go 50 mph on downhill runs.

Both Adm. Fox and I are now official retirees from our university teaching positions - though I prefer the Spanish word, jubilado. That word comes closer to what we felt when we turned in keys and had our final separation papers stamped and approved.

It felt like a cross between a graduation and getting a presidential pardon.

(Asute readers will note that there isn't a lot of wistful remembrances here about decades of teaching. But come on, it's the middle of the night, I haven't slept and I am typing this on my iPad.)

By the way, for iPad addicts, note that your wireless keyboards won't work on airplanes. They aren't allowed. Instead, you have to use the screen keyboard on which touch typing is almost impossible.

Almost.

And as I type this we have started hitting some dirty air and the plane is bouncing like Dolly Parton in a Christmas special.

More later.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad