I am writing this entry from the inside of a cloud. That's not hyperbole, I am 30,000 feet above the ground and making an opening in the misty whiteness, and with about 2 feet of leg room and free drinks! I'm taking a day trip that would probably run a few hundred if thousands of dollars, but I don't know the price because I do not have to pay for this flight. I'm flying standby and loving every moment of it.
When I found myself with free time last year I made one of the best decisions of my life and I decided to take a summer position with an airline. I thought about flying often. I had always been fascinated with planes and traveling. As a kid, there was airline parapernalia all around my house, my father and my mother had worked at the airport in Liberia in their youth. So this seemed like a natural move for me and staring up into the skies was simply not cutting it.
"You think you know but you have no idea."
These words were the opening line form every episode of MTV's early 2000's television series, Diary. If there's one thing MTV ever got right as it slowly betrayed its name and descended into a reality channel it was this; just that one sentence. I wanted to learn about travel and to know more of the world. My plan was to get my travel education and to touch down in cities that were once so far from my thoughts that they seemed mythical, fabricated--Narnia. My experiences have not been what I have expected but informative still, and they have left me with incredible stories. Not long after starting at the airport, I came to understad that there was going to be a lot more to this than I orginally thought, so I bought a diary (okay, it's app but I needed to record these moments).
Before flying standby was a part of life, I spent many nights staring into the dark sky and following the lights moving between the stars. I would trace their course with my eyes and made back stories for where they were going or coming from. I imagined how that kind of freedom would feel. My imagination was not ready for this reality. It is strange to be privy to conversations where people go to Miami for breakfast, Costa Rica for a weekend and Reykjavik, Iceland . . . just because, and last minute. I honestly feel like I am a member of a secret world, a special place that so many people visit but no one really gets to know.
Now I can spend my leisure cutting through clouds and changing forecasts. During these moments the cliches of dream chasing seem more sensible than silly. I was just one young man with an idea, and now the world is open to me. Despite the intense levels of crazy I must deal with in order to earn and keep this benefit (crazy schedules, crazy commutes, and occasionally very crazy passengers), I still believe that this was a wonderful decision. I hope you will think so too as I share my experiences from little known travel knowledge and logistics information I have acquired to the unbelieveable interactions I have had the pleasure to witness and be a part of.
Whenever I cut through clouds at night, I don't need to imagine what we look like, I've seen it so many times. A fast moving light shooting across a backdrop of stars, alsmot like a shooting star. The only difference is now I know that we are going 500 mph. This is how life works, we find something beautiful from afar and we move in closer; study it, experience it, learn it. Sometimes there is still beauty left when we are done, no matter how much we have uncovered. Looking down from the fast moving light provides a better view and I am comforted because I know the story of how I came from down there to be here. I've realized that this experience is not just about where this job and benefit have allowed me to go but where it's taken me.
-MM