Why I Oughta...

On a recent takeoff from ORD, we came across four buildings in Chicago that are peeking out the top of the cloud cover.  Contrast this view you see below with a cloud-free version at sunrise from last November .   Three of those buildings are familiar to me:  From the left: Sears Willis Tower, Aon Center, the mystery building and Trump Tower.  What's the third one?  Pretty sure it is the St. Regis building on Wacker Drive .  Back when I worked in the Aon Center, we would - on occassion - get views that were 'above the clouds'.  Here's one from six years ago (March 2016) from the 64th Floor of the Aon Center . 

I was sitting at the gate in my American Airlines plane waiting to back away when this ANA plane taxi'ed by our gate.  A NA is a Japanese carrier that is doing a "Star Wars Project" as they call it.  I've flown a few times to Japan (Narita), but I've only flown either United or JAL.  This BB-8 livery is one of three in the Star Wars fleet:  they also have a R2-D2 and C-3PO versions . If you're interested in seeing it, the fine folks at Flight Radar 24 have provided this tracking link :  Follow the BB-8 777-300ER with registration JA789A . For you #AvGeeks, t he BB-8 livery is on a Boeing 767-300 .  This plane is awfully cute - but I think it is pretty clear: the C-3PO livery is the *best* one of the three, right?  Check out the release on the ANA Star Wars site here for full details including the cabin details that match the livery: From ANA's Star wars microsite - showing the cups, aprons and seat headrests all C-3PO-themed. This ...

This is the *next* in the series of posts showing the view out my airplane window on a trip back home after a week of work meetings.    The last time was this sunset on the way home from Newark .  Before that was seeing the Aurora Borealis over Alaska .    This time, I saw this rainbow somewhere between Tennessee and O'hare on my regional airplane that wasn't the SpaceJet 1 .  I was sitting in the row of 1 seat on the port side (do they call it port/starboard on airplanes??) of the aircraft - which felt like a nice little perk after being exhausted from the week of work. 1. [For disclosure - and for those who don't know - I work at Edelman Public Relations Worldwide. I work/workeded on the launch on the Mitsubishi Spacejet Family at the Paris Air Show this year. They are a client of Edelman's.] ↩

A few weeks ago, I posted  a photo on the blog of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) from my JAL flight home .  I've spent quite a bit of time up in the air during the first part of this year.  Thus, I have seen a lot of cloud-time.  Let's post this week another photo from the road - this time on a recent flight home from Newark where I caught the Sunset while we were above the clouds somewhere over Pennsylvania.

Listen...I'm not a little guy.  And I know that the airlines don't make it great for any of us flying these days.  But, on a recent trip, I had a dude doing what I think the kids these days are calling " Manspreading " on me that I had to snap a photo.  You can see above that my legs are the darker denim.  And I'm in the aisle seat.  The dude next to me - in the lighter color jeans - has his leg spread so far part that you can see how he has it past not just what I'll call the 'dividing line' of the armrest in front of us, but he's encroaching on my seat-back pocket. This is too far for someone - even in the middle seat - to go, right?  I mean...I ceded the armrest to the dude.  That's the responsible thing to do for someone in the middle, right?  But this?  I don't abide.