The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

The good news: Elisheva (our congregation's rabbi) and her daughter came over for Shabbat dinner last night in the sukkah. The bad news: I missed it, being out of town. The good news: I was out of town visiting my folks. The bad news: the trip was by way of Philadelphia. The good news: flights were smooth and on time. The bad news: the initial flight left SFO at about 6am. The good news: I got into Syracuse not long after 5pm. Combine the route and the time: that's where the beautiful comes in, which makes this last doubly good news.

Sometimes, it would be nice to have a direct flight (sometimes?), non-stop from SFO or SJC to Syracuse. Though I've flown direct here three times, they'e never been non-stop, and they took 10-12 hours of flight time (once in 11 hours elapsed, once in about a day and half elapsed). Much as I love general aviation, the nature of the trip has to be a bit different from this one to use the Mooney instead of the airlines. (I suppose if I had a TBM850, it would be a different story. Fast as 2FR is, a TBM850 is quite a bit faster!) Flying the airlines into a small market like Syracuse means at least one stop and an almost certain plane change. Philadelphia ended up being a fortuitous choice, even though much less direct than, for example, Chicago, Denver, or St. Louis.

Though we're very (very, very, exceptionally) spoiled by the weather in the Bay Area, we lack the spectacular fall colors of the northeast. I miss those colors. Heading to Truckee is a consolation, but only that. (Yes, the aspen groves in full color are fabulous, but still nothing compared to an entire counrtyside in the autumn of the northeast) Flying from PHL to SYR in the late afternoon presented the most lovely vistas. As we flew north, the hills changed color, from a rather dull greenish-yellow to brilliant yellows, golds, oranges, flaming reds, deep reds, speckled throughout with green. As the sun set and the light got longer the hills all-but came alive with their colors.

I wished I'd been on that flight in the Mooney, down low, around 3,000 AGL, taking it all in.