THE VIEW FROM THE WINDOW SEAT

Ever since my Snot-Nose Days, I’ve preferred the window seat.

I don’t care that getting to the aisle (say, in order to use the restroom) requires that I get past two people. I can hold my water.

I like the view. It has fascinated me since my earliest trips on the Silver Aerial Bus... and I’ve been riding that bus for a loooong time. Over 55 years, ever since I was a snivelling two-year-old being dragged off to Miami to visit the grandparents.

Speaking of Miami, here's one I took of Miami Beach in 1969. The bizarre color scheme is the result of using Ektachrome Infrared Aero, a film that renders anything with chlorophyll (like living plants) in an unearthly red, as though H. G. Wells’s Martians had won the War of the Worlds.


Miami Beach. The small dick-shaped island is Allison Island; on the left is La Gorce Island, complete with Country Club. [Click to embiggen.]

More below the fold.

Washington, D.C. is always impressive when seen from the airplane window...


Lincoln Memorial.


Jefferson Memorial.


The U. S. Capitol.

Here’s New York, the city that never sleeps.


Manhattan and the East River.


Coney Island. You can see the legendary Parachute Jump tower easily, but you’ll need sharp eyes to spot the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel. And a microscope to find the Jooette.

For a change of pace, here is the polar icecap, shot as I flew the Great Circle Route from Chicago to Tokyo with Elder Daughter last year.


Somewhere over the Bering Sea.

And the mountains of Alaska, America’s great wilderness.


The rugged landscape of Alaska, shot in March 1980 from a Chicago-Manila flight.

I ask you: From what other vantage point can you see stuff like this?