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Flying...

Rory and I flew back from TechEd on the same plane and were able to sit beside each other. Andrew and Chris were on that flight too.

Rory has a bit of a fear of flying, so I tried to distract him from the fact that we were way up in the air, with nothing in between us and the hard, hard ground.

We had seats in the back of the plane. The *back* of the plane. The *very back* of the plane. The engine was right outside. We didn't have a window, which helped hide the fact that we were flying, but the engine noise kept giving away the fact that we weren't just sitting in a TechEd cabana.

He was working on a blog entry and also doing some research for a future entry, the second in a series. I must say, for someone who is afraid of flying he was doing quite well.

Things were going OK until the captain came over the speaker to announce that we were 31,000 feet in the air. I looked a Rory and smiled an apology. He had a look of terror on his face.

To help make things better I told him we were less than six miles high. "When you think about it, it's not really that high." That didn't really help at all.

To further distract him from his discomfort I thought I would show him a couple of pictures I took on the flight down to San Diego. I knew he really wanted to see what was going on outside, but we didn't have a window. I popped open this one of Half Dome, California from 31000 feet. I reminded him that Half Dome is over 8000 feet tall, and yet it looked so small. For some reason it didn't settle his mind.

Half Dome, California

Then I opened this one of Los Angeles from 31000 feet.

Los Angeles

It didn't do the trick either. Even when I zoomed in to show him that Dodger Stadium was in the picture he didn't sit back and relax. (He's not much of a baseball fan.)

Detail of Dodger Stadium from the picture above...

Hm.

Desperate, I did the unthinkable. I distracted him by opening the air vent above my head. The vent must have had a direct line to the fan from the lavatory, because the smell was awful. At least it took his mind off the flying.