Altitude

Cloud Watching! (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)

I love clouds!

As a kid, I used to lie on the ground many a day and just stare up at them. Forever.

A couple of weeks ago, we went on a vacation to visit family in upstate New York, and on the flight out of Colorado, I looked out the window and saw these! They were incredible—pictures never do them adequate justice—and I just couldn’t pass them up! So, I took out my iPad and began snapping shots of the cloud banks we approached.

Also as I looked outside the Embraer-175, I also noticed how squeaky clean the aircraft was! In fact, it appeared near brand new. I loved how the sun glinted off the air frame and engine! But, upon closer inspection, I did see a bunch of splatter on the leading edge of the wing. Huh, thought I, what was splattered all over that leading edge? How high do insects fly? Well, a quick look into this as I wrote this post told me that the upper range can be about 6,000 feet, but most flies and bugs seem to hit their ceiling at about 2,500 or so (+/-) feet, depending on temperature.

Squeaky Clean! (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)

Of course, I also looked to the wing to make sure there were no…you know…creatures playing around out there with our aircraft (the Twilight Zone’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”)….

Nope. Nothing there. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak, August 11, 2016)

When we do these trips, I do, what I call, “Eating Across America.” This simply involves chowing down on whatever comes my way as I graze throughout the day, and traveling across the country is no different! I eat about six times a day, “smaller” meals (“smaller” to me is not necessarily “small” to you…), and on an aircraft, the pickins can be a tad slim, so I take what I can get! Usually I pack food with me, but this time things got away from me and I came empty-handed. Anyway, my “ingestion” can, however, be quite intimidating to the untrained observer. I’m a professional [in my own mind], so don’t try this at home. But, even to me, sometimes the aftermath isn’t pretty….