Over the Pond

Flying over the deep blue waters of the Atlantic I couldn’t help but forget of the travels that will take place in the next two weeks. They where replaced by a journey that I dream of far ahead of me. I have a dream of sending my daughter off to college, getting a sail boat and sailing the world. The wispy clouds that I saw below would one day be clouds above. The turbulence that tossed our Boeing 777 about will one day be high and stormy seas. The cloudy horizon from which the sun was born will be replaced by ocean as far as the eye can see. The course on which my plane is traveling will possibly be a course that my wind filled sails will take me. I am landing in Frankfurt in 1 hour or so and am comforted by these ever so vivid visions of what I plan my future to be. We are nearing land and passing Ireland just to our North. I can only imagine the feeling of excitement and accomplishment that seeing land after goings weeks of just seeing water must bring.

I will need to make sure to catch sleep on the flight from Frankfurt to Almaty, watched 2 of the “Hobbit” movies and got none so far. Looking at the map on the screen ahead of me I see many cities that I have yet to visit. London, Brussels, Rome, Madrid, Bucharest to name a few. So much traveling and exploring I have done so far, yet so much more left unseen and untouched. I have a map of Oregon and the United States hanging in my office to remind of the places I have been, the people I have met, and the experience each has brought me. They also remind me of the places I haven’t been. When I get back I will hang a map of the world to fuel my hunger for new destinations, and keep what has already been discovered fresh in my memory.

We began to make our approach to Frankfurt Airport. The German Countryside looked quite pleasant from the air. The fields were irregular (although what is regular?). In the U.S. several fields will usually have a farmhouse assigned to it. Here the fields dominated the landscape and bullied the collection of houses into a bunched farm village every so often. The streets disobeyed the intention of engineers and followed a direction that the landscape and elevations dictated. I imagined driving, or riding, through the quaint little towns. Have several hour layover and then off to Almaty.