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My trip home was fairly pleasant one. I took an evening flight out of Reagan-National Airport. It was the perfect time to travel. There were no jostling crowds and any lines were all quite short. My layover in Houston wasn’t as pleasant, as there were more people and most of them were getting tired and cranky. Plus they had a CNN on with the volume blaring in the waiting area by the gates. I do not block out television chatter well, so I found this to be extremely grating.
I got incredibly lucky with seating. On the longest length of the trip the plane was only 1/3 full and I ended up with a row of three seats all to myself. The 28-minute hop from Houston to Austin was 1/3 empty and my seatmate and I had an empty between us. She also turned out to be very pleasant company. There also was no competing for room in the overhead compartments. Note to self: Evening flights are a good thing.
A really neat thing happed on the flight to Houston. About an hour and a half into our flight the captain suddenly and without explanation asked us to return to our seats and put our seat belts on. About five minutes later I saw a flash of light out my window. We were driving past a lightening storm.
There was one huge tall cloud, not that far ahead of us, that towered above the rest and a couple smaller ones, near it, that were about half its size. It was somewhat surreal as it all looked like something created in a special effects studio. It looked like a huge lopsided snowman with random flashing Christmas lights inside. A flash would go off in the tallest cloud only to be echoed in the smaller ones.
Of course, my camera was in the overhead compartment. I briefly considered disobeying the rules and getting it out anyway, but being the good girl that I am, I resisted. Instead I just glued myself to the window so I wouldn’t miss a thing.
I only saw a few lightning flashes extend to the ground, and they were beautiful. We were the perfect distance away. We had a great view, but we never got close enough to hear a thing or experience any turbulence.
4 comments:
I once saw an electrical storm from above, Lora and it was amazing but the best thing I've ever seen from a plane was two fronts sliding along each other. It was like mountains of clouds, each side a different height, sliding along each other. I know it doesn't sound like much but it was very impressive looking.
I have never seen one in the air but they sure are cool to watch from the ground.
Did you know I lived just outside Houston for 7 years. They do have the best lightening storms there. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else! My sons were born in Tomball and my brother Dan lived in Houston for 22 years.
Awesome photo. And the title of your post is very helpful (I've had an exacting few days).
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