It’s been that kind of day, stepping into the vaguely-Gattaca concrete and steel international terminal at SFO, looking up at open space and scrolling monitors as the streamlined and elevated BART shuttle whooshes off silently behind glass to for its cameo as a science fiction stand-in. It just came to me as an entire image, that this otherwise unremarked scene we were passing through was the stuff of carefully curated futurism 30, 20  – even 10 years ago.

And sitting on the plane, here, now, browsing the web, and getting more information about our flight than anyone but our captain and first officer have – interesting to note that we shed about 12kts of airspeed when we transitioned from Salt Lake to Denver ATC.  I tell you – we’re in the future, and I only just noticed it.

…

Below, the earth passes by as it always has on this route. I know it surprisingly well – I’ve flown those passes much more intimately: the gentle walls of I-80 rolling downhill from Truckee, the winding canyon from Brigham City up to Bear Lake (a handy emergency landing site on one of the few rough stretches east). And the flats of Nebraska – Torrington, where Martin and I diverted when a thunderstorm blocked our plan to get the T-6 to Alliance by nightfall.  I spend so much time looking at maps, tracing my fingers over old lines I’ve drawn on them, remembering the stories they tell of my little adventures. Now I’m looking out the window, following the interstates with my finger, tracing those same journeys from my past.

And here I am in the future, blogging it all at 35,000 feet and 500 miles an hour (well 562mph, to be precise…)