It was time to board soon and I walked in as seating area 2 was called. David had booked lovely aisle seats for long flights. The walk through the first class, business and then onto Economy is really a tease! In a while I saw a couple come up and stood infront of me. Mary, had a lovely soft and peaceful smile. Our eyes met… I kind of gestured: Are these your seats? Mary softly replied: I’m afraid so! Soon we were taxing for take-off and we were air-borne. It was noisy! But Mary and I got chatting and much before we knew… we were cruising over Fiji at thirty-four thousand feet, very close to sunset as I noticed through the small window next to Chuck, Mary’s husband. Sunset hues over relatively unpolluted almost pristine air is breath-taking. These are things a photographer craves to capture. Unfortunately, I couldn’t shoot any picture during my flight but I wasn’t very keen either!
Mary and Chuck live in Peoria, Illinois, a town close to Chicago and St Louis. They have travelled quite extensively over the last few decades and still do and this was their 4th visit to Australia. Their most current trip was around Tasmania! In the short time we spoke we went from Australian vistas, warm weather(which we dont value) to general photography, Sydney Harbour, Las Vegas, Rio, snow, moonlight cinemas, Indian food, travel to India, life in Hong Kong, SXSW coffee in the US, southern, more southern, Chicago, disability, designing for the disabled, my itenary, their road trip to Peoria, Mary and Chucks grandkids, internet, the amazing journalistic movie ‘Goodnight and Goodluck‘, books, reading habits, funnily enough ‘The Kite Runner‘… oh let me think there were lots more… as the fiery orb sank in the distant cloud we started to relax a bit as we saw the flight attendants get busy with their chores. My lamb roast dinner was yumm with the red from Napa valley complimented my dinner rather well. Lovely. I reclined, turned on my noise reduction paraphernelia and tuned into the in-flight jazz station. How fortunate am I to have a lovely comfortable seat of my choice, loved ones to help me through all the way to take off and then the beautiful company of a lovely amicable co-passenger. A rare find I say. A bit sleepy already, as the Jazz picked up and I could feel myself relax more and more as time went by!
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