She Loves to Fly, and It shows

I would really hate air travel, if it weren't for the flying part. I'm claustrophobic, I don't like heights, and I despise TV dinners. I'm too short to fit right in airplane seats; my neck always winds up in that indentation where the small of your back is supposed to go.

But imagine it. You are in a box. A little, skinny box with tiny portholes. And somehow, that little box is up in the sky. In the sky! Where it's not supposed to be. And if you lift off the ground in Washington at noon, you can be in Boston at 1:30. Or maybe 1:35. At the very latest, 1:40. In a different city, nine hours away by car!

This is what happens to me. I can't help it. Whenever I fly, I soar.

Two years ago, flying home for Thanksgiving, I nestled into a Trump Shuttle seat next to a friend, and began to prattle off my typical I-love-air-planes speech. I give it every couple of months. Usually when I'm on a plane.

"We're going off the ground," I gushed. "We're flying. We are in a box and we are in the air." It kind of went on from there, and lasted through the entire taxi and take-off. It stopped mid-ascent, when I ran out of breath.

My friend stared at me the whole time. As if I were insane. "You're cute, Weiss," he finally said, raising an eyebrow. He called me by my last name. People always call me by my last name when they condescend.

Somehow, I seem to be the only one in the whole huddled mass of worn, jaded travelers that shuttles routinely from city to city who still seems excited about air travel. Mention "Orville and Wilbur," and most people think of a popcorn zealot and a talkative pig. I'm the only one who can't forget--and who can't take flying for granted.

The wise traveler, I'm told, chooses an aisle seat for his flying needs. It makes it easier to get to the bathroom, they say, and affords you a better chance of beating the crowd when you reach your final destination. To hell with efficiency; I always choose the window seat. And then I stare out. At the runway whizzing by, then at the crazily tilted world below as we climb, nose first, into the air. On clear days, I try to catch a glimpse of cities below. (Flying up the East Coast, you can make out all of Manhattan--the shape of the island, the green of Central Park, the shimmering top of each skyscraper.) On cloudy days, I spot the shadows of clouds on the land far below. On rotten days, the plane flies above the weather. Below you, stretching out forever, is a floor of cloud that looks like snow.

Flying is such a fragile, precarious act; a plane is the tiniest speck hurling through a great expanse of sky, ever aware that it shouldn't be there. In the back of my mind, I always think that the dream could end. Like the coyote who walks, nonchalantly, off the cliff--and realizes, a few steps later, that he went too far. That's the moment, of course, when he starts to fall.

But airplanes don't fall. At least not usually. That's the greatest thing about flying: It works.

If only there weren't other people around. Flight attendants banging, drinks spilling, babies crying. And the occasional insane neighbor. Like the man who gave me his personal theory on nuclear disarmament over a trip from Logan to Washington National. Wedged between the window and his unceasing chatter, I buried my head in The Scarlet Letter, trying to look too engrossed to talk. The guy in the aisle seat pretended he didn't speak English. I lost.

If only there weren't airlines with frequent flyer deals and baggage restrictions and oh-so-clever slogans like my current favorite, "USAir begins with U."

If only there were nothing but the plane, the sky and me. And a pilot, because I'm not about to step into the cockpit. No way.