Light Show

I'm flying a four day trip almost exclusively at night, which lends great opportunity to see some spectacular evening sights. Arriving into JFK from the west with a early turn over the east side of Manhattan really shows how much light emanates from the city at 5AM. Spectacular! However, what follows after landing is not so spectacular - a quick day sleep at the hotel, followed by more night flying down to Florida and back. Trips such as these require sleeping on the backside of the clock, and I will always find it rather odd retiring to bed with the sun rising in the east and waking with the sun descending in the west. Therefore it is essential to be head-on-pillow before the sun actually comes up. Tonight, no such luck.

Below is a photo from my hotel room as I was going to bed. Surprisingly, this is not a Manhattan sunset, but a sunrise. With such short winter days, by the time I awoke and pulled the curtains, it still looked like this but the sun was descending in the other direction.

Later that evening as we approached Orlando, the Captain and I were treated with the Disney 9PM fireworks show. Once again, a perfect night to view some great sights. Tonight I'm flying with a JFK-based reserve Captain who is just a few days younger than me. That's one thing about junior bases - the junior Captains are pretty new to the left seat and are roughly my age. That also means my time to move over to the left seat is almost here as well.

What's great about tonight is we both have plenty in common; speaking movie quotes and the like brings back memories of flying up and down the East Coast in the Embraer 190 with young crews. Wow, I can't believe it has almost been a year since I came to the Bus.

Time flies!