Not that long ago 3:30am was the time I regularly went to sleep - today it is the time I get up. I'm flying to Seattle via Phoenix to an America much removed from this one and a temperature that will be much more tolerable for a northern lad like me. With just three hours sleep the time differnece throws me. The flight from San Antonio is two hours long; time wise I leave San Antonio at 6am and arrive at Phoenix ten minutes later.
I'm glad I'm not venturing out the airport into Phoenix itself. On the weather reports they grade temperature from green (cool) through to red (hot). Phoenix is regularly pink or white; 110 degrees and more; off the scale. The air conditioned bubble that is the airport is as close as I get to the Arizona desert and I'm happy with that.
In the departure lounge at Phoenix a shared comedic confusion at the boarding order (families... older people... business... gold class... platinum...) gets me talking to Rachel who is heading the same way. She asks me a question I've been asked often since getting here "What are the gas prices like over there?" When I confess to not knowing because I don't drive Rachel shows the same amazement that I have face a lot in America; as if I had just said that I live in a barrel or I only eat things which begin with the letter 'Q'. People not special enough to be in one of those priority boarding groups are called forward by the group number on their ticket... I have no group number. I decide to go with 6. From her seat midway down the plane Rachel laughs at me as I trudge down the aisle some ten minutes asfter she had dared me to board with Group 2.
From the window seat on the back row of flight 83 I can see the sand and mountains that lie to the north of Phoenix; and that is all I really see for two whole hours. The vast scale of America hits you when you see it from above like this. If you look over Britain from a plane you will see some sign of human life; a house or a car; here you can easily fly for an hour without sight of either. To reinforce the vast terrain the country covers, the plane, which set off from the Arizona desert, approaches Seattle with snow capped mountains poking through the clouds.
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