There is always something to see from the air and the ground

Somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. I was on a plane. I didn’t have a map or a compass.

The airport in Denver was quiet except for the sound of a ticking clock. Once I concentrated on the sound, I realized it was not a clock at all. It was the sound of the moving walkway near our gate and it was not “ticking” as consistent at a moving second hand.

This inconsistency bothered me until the man four seats away from Paul and I decided watching porn on his phone in a public area was a good idea. When he realized I was giving him the “hey dude, that’s inappropriate” stare, he put in his headphones. Apparently, headphones make him disappear.

On the plane, Paul watched “Nowhere Man” on his tablet while I gazed out the window, watching the Rocky Mountains turn from brown to being covered with a light dusting of snow. The brown still peeked through the bits of lingering white.

Puffs of clouds glided above us, dancing along the sky as the plane gently kissed them from below. Watching the land pass by, I traced rivers twisting left and right as they snaked through the cuts in the land the water had made, a process millions of years in the making. It is still happening today, centimeter by centimeter, as the water continues to gradually slice away at the soil.

I wish the plane had flown a little slower so I could have taken out my Nikon for a photo and not my crappy cell phone. I also would love to look at aerial maps of the Rocky Mountains to figure out where this is so that I may one day visit.

The ground becomes tinged red and gives way to pale, then dark blue skies along the horizon. Above it is darker still.

The land is vast, with valleys and caverns and I began to wonder how easy they would be to traverse. Our ancestors once walked here. They knew how, but I doubt most of us could.

Pockets of water, large and small, provide life for whatever it is that lives down there. The empty land soon gives way to lush green valleys and signs of civilization. Rectangle plots of land and the tell-tale circular marks of center pivot irrigation dot a valley surrounded by mountains.

The distinct ridges of the Rocky Mountains give way to darker, volcanic rock. The Sierra Nevada mountain range. Some are sloping, while the ridges are hard to determine due to the absorption of light on the black peaks.

The airport in San Francisco is like every other. Junk food, magazines, and expensive restaurants line the halls on the way to your gate. Our plane is fifteen minutes late. Not a big deal. Then, it’s “a few more minutes” and “a few minutes more” before boarding begins. Two hours later we board the plane. For once, the flight is uneventful except for the man in the seat behind me. He uses his barf bag many times to hack up a wad of spit and deposit it into the bag.

This may be a shitty cell phone picture, but it’s still better than how this food tasted.

I sleep periodically on the plane, having never fully slept the night before. There is plenty of entertainment, but I’d rather look out the window. I re-watch Blade Runner 2049 and Wonder Woman because they are great movies. Black Panther was not.

As we arrive in Hong Kong, Paul and I choose to take a taxi to the hotel instead of figuring out public transportation. We’ve been awake for about 27 hours now. Let someone who knows where they are going take us there. We’ll sort it out tomorrow.

It’s dark outside, nearly 10 p.m., local time. We travel the highway and over a bridge. I see the port and many shipping containers. I want to stop and stare, but I am a passenger on this ride. There will be no nighttime pictures of the port. The city streets remind me of New York City, except here, signs are in English and either Cantonese or Mandarin. Except KFC and the Colonel’s face. There’s also 7-Eleven.

The hotel is a normal hotel room. It has all the usual things, but there is something quite different about this one. You can see into the bathroom and shower.

This is a terrible picture, but I don’t care. Paul and I had been up about 29 hours at this point. Paul is demonstrating how you can see people in the shower. Yeah. Someone thought that was a good idea to see into the shower and toilet even when in use.

Some laugh are had at the thought process behind this particular style of shower, but we quickly move on. We’re hungry. The airline food was close to garbage and we want something good to eat.

Our hotel room. The bathroom is on the left, just out of frame.

As we settle in, we notice it’s 11 p.m. I don’t eat that late, but, really, what time is it? I made Paul order room service, something we also don’t normally do. “It’s okay, we’re on our holidays,” Paul says.

As I sit down to eat my chicken Caesar salad, I started thinking about our new journey that begins in the morning and something more than one person has said to me over the years.

They say I am brave to travel to places where I don’t speak the language and I do not know anyone. An act of bravery is a selfless act and I assure you traveling is no such thing.

I travel to learn, have adventures, be anonymous, to know myself better, because life is too short not to. I travel to challenge myself, to feel alive, and to experience other cultures.

Most of all, I travel so I never have to look back and wonder, what if? I know my travels are fruitful to me, and that is all that matter. So, my love of travel can never be called brave. It is purely selfish and I love every minute of it.