I spend a fair amount of time traveling on business. During these trips I always have a chance to:
a.) Do some people watching
b.) Observe how others choose to deal with, what to me are, standard challenges of traveling in the world today.
In the course of these travels I wind up meeting and having those innocous, casual conversations with folks that you are “confined” with for several hours. Sometimes these are folks that you see every week, and others are there for a few hours and then never cross your path again. And there are those that you really just try to ignore for what ever reason: they are drunk, you want a little down time, etc.
The other day I was on a flight that was packed as full as it would get, which is typical for all flights in the past several years. An attractive older lady was in the middle seat of the aircraft next to me. She spent the first 90 minutes of the flight working on her e-mail and presentations, etc. silently. As we were being vectored for approach, and she had to shut her electronics down she started into the conversational mode. Now, I was in one of those “It’s been a long week. I just want to get home moods.” so I was a bit brusque. But she asked me an interesting question that I had to think on for a while. She asked. “Why do you prefer sitting by the window”?
As I pondered the answer to that question the standard surface reasons seemed to pop up:
1. I like to see what is happening outside, to see what we are flying over, etc.
2. It is nice to have a place to tuck a pillow and lean against when you need a nap.
But, those were just surface reasons and really did not address the root reason. It wasn’t until we landed (a bit hot, and long) when the thrust reversers really kicked in, and the guys up front stood on the breaks pretty hard that I was reminded why I really prefer the window. I spent a few too many flights without any window to look out of. You see the back end of a C-130 looks a lot like this, only a bit more cramped.
