On Clouds and Bladders

27Aug--LAX--Minneapolis/St. Paul--12:10p--5:46p--42F
27Aug--Minneapolis/St. Paul--Amsterdam--7:35p--10:55a--33A
28Aug--Amsterdam--Rome (Fiumicino)--1:40p--3:55p--21F

I specifically picked window seats on each of my flights. Just my luck, the window of seat 42F is dirty and slightly maimed. I guess seatguru.com doesn't cater to stare-out-the-window-and-don't-care-about-leg-room-(yay shorties!) people. So I'm left, camera in hand, craning my neck backwards to make use of the very clean and clear window behind me.

I like windows.

And clouds...

Whipped cream, cotton balls, melded dippin' dots, towers, an occasional teddy bear or crocodile… you get the idea. And when the light shines in such a way to make the clouds bright white with a golden glow on the edges, I could easily be convinced that angelic type beings live up here.

One of my favorite moments (I'm enjoying the moments, Mooder!) is when it's blindingly bright and sunny and a thick layer of clouds stretches endlessly underneath us... no breaks or holes to hint at the existence of the real world below.

Then, descent.

I wonder if these clouds will be nice to us and let us pass through without stomach dropping turbulence?

I personify everything.

We break through the bottom of the cloud layer to find that the world still exists below. The contrast is startling-- this world is darker with an entirely different quality of light, filtered through the thick layer of clouds. Less pure but more interesting perhaps?

Then.

Oh dear.

My bladder doth protest.

And there's an hour left. And standing (erm, well, sitting) between me and the restroom are two people, both absorbed in their own worlds either napping or reading, with half-filled cups and wrappers sitting mockingly on their open trays.

I hate disturbing people unless absolutely necessary. I declare this not 100% necessary. Hear that bladder? NOT 100% necessary!! An hour to go... my bladder can handle this...

Except for the extra delay in landing due to turbulence.

Stupid clouds. How quickly they turn from imagination sparkers to bladder killers.

Then the endless taxiing.

Then the sitting--far from the gate--because another plane is now sitting at our gate. Freaking window seat! Once a portal to another world, now a portal to the emergency room because of bladder, erm, burstage.

Then at the gate... waiting for all the people in the 41 rows in front of me to get a move on. Yeah, I picked seat 42F because, you guessed it, I wanted a window seat.

Beauty out the window or practicality in an aisle seat for my ridiculously tiny bladder?

The answer came toward the end of the 8 hour flight that brought me over the Atlantic to Amsterdam. Out the window lay my first view of European soil (since 2003, that is) laid out in the form of the coast of the Netherlands. The clouds are above, the waves are crashing below...

The view is gorgeous.

The window seats were worth it.

And my bladder can totally deal with it.