No Regrets!

Mostly thanks to COVID, it’s been a while since I’ve done any real traveling. So it was with great jubilation when I learned my work would be flying me and our whole department to a fancy resort in Alaska for our off-site team event this year. It’s nice to work for a company that has money. 🙂

Once getting the itinerary from my company, I decided to take full advantage and go up a few days early to have my own little adventure before joining the work team. I booked a little hotel in Anchorage, and I’ve got some fun activities planned, including a Matanuska Glacier hike, a train ride from Anchorage to Seward, and a Kenai Fjords cruise for some whale-watching.

This is my first trip after the federal mask mandates have been lifted in airports and on planes. A few people, including me, are still voluntarily wearing them. I’m seeing about 25% masking in the airport and on the plane. Such a polarizing issue, isn’t it? I will say that I was especially aware of a guy coughing a few rows back from me, and I’m sure a few people sitting nearby are on edge.

A customary northbound take-off from Reagan National Airport took us by the monuments on the National Mall and offered a fleeting glimpse of the White House before we disappeared into a layer of low-hanging clouds. A few moments later, we punched through the clouds and were flying up into brilliant blue sky. So cool.

Due to the absence of that goofy American Airlines magazine in the seat back pocket, I was forced to read the even goofier aircraft safety card. After noticing that were were on a “Boeing 737 09/21 Revision”, some quick googling revealed that this name is a sneaky rebrand of the 737 MAX, notorious for a couple of crashes in 2019 that grounded the whole fleet for a couple of years. They seem to have resolved the issues.

Quick layover in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. While sitting and eating a locally sourced but still overpriced burger, a passerby dropped off some pocket-sized biblical literature for me to read.

Now on the plane to Alaska. The flight is scheduled for 7 hours but the captain is saying that favorable winds might get us to Anchorage in only 5 1/2 hours. I’ve been to Alaska once before, but that was on a cruise from Vancouver, so I haven’t flown over this part of North America. We’ve just ascended into the hazy blue skies over Chicago, and we’re heading north. Just north of the city, the undeveloped landscape is rugged but flat and pockmarked with countless irregularly shaped lakes, clear evidence of Ice Age glaciation. I imagine most of Canada will also look this way. The flight path takes us over a whole lot of nothingness before crossing the Canadian Rockies and dropping down to Ted Stevens (former Senator from Alaska) Anchorage International Airport. I hope there’s still some light in the sky when we land, because from the glimpses of the Canadian Rockies I saw on my last flight out of Anchorage from the dreaded middle seat, the scenery looks beautiful.

Time to dodge the large arm of a middle-aged woman that is hanging over an armrest and encroaching on my personal space, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.