Nuria Returns

Today, Monday 9/19/22, is the day my lady-friend Nuria begins her trip from Costa Rica to Richmond, Virginia. (She flew from the US to Costa Rica two weeks ago to visit family.) I use FlightAware to track her flight. Not constantly, of course, but I look now and then to see her progress. I think it is interesting.

I used to fly a lot, when I had my first job out of university. I flew on lots of different planes. Mostly jets, including the 747, which was fairly new at that time. I flew on the twin-engine 737 mostly. It entered airline service in 1968. The 747 entered airline service in 1970.

I flew on the Beech 99, which has different models carrying different numbers of passengers, but the Beech that I flew on had 12 passenger seats. There was no door between the passenger compartment and the pilots, so you could see the pilots and hear their conversations.

Beech 99

I also flew on the de Havilland Twin Otter (below) a number of times. It carried 18 passengers. There are still over 500 Twin Otters currently in operation worldwide.

de Havilland Twin Otter

I liked flying so much that I began taking flying lessons. But life interfered, as it often does, and my career as a student pilot was short. But sometimes on a weekend I would drive to the local airport and if I saw someone I knew preparing a plane for a solo joyride, I'd bum a ride along with him. The flight might last 30 or 40 minutes and we'd be flying at a thousand feet. It was fun. 

Nuria just sent me an audio message. She has passed through immigration in Orlando but the immigration officer didn't stamp her passport. She is wondering if it matters. I don't think it matters; everything is going digital. I'm sure that somewhere a government computer knows that she is in the country. Big Brother is real. (I refer to the Big Brother of George Orwell's classic novel, 1984—not the group of people who live in a house with 94 cameras and 113 microphones recording every minute of their lives 24 hours a day. Probably not even George Orwell could have imagined such a world.)

Nuria will wait in the Orlando airport all night for her flight to Richmond. I'll be at the airport at 10AM to pick her up. I figure it will take 15 minutes for the plane's passengers to disembark, then 15 minutes to pick up her luggage and get to my Jeep, then 45 minutes to drive to my home. On the way, we will probably stop and eat. I haven't been to the grocery store in two weeks, so food is scarce in my house. I don't mind eating tuna fish from a can, but Nuria will probably prefer a meal that civilized people eat. And after she has traveled all night and half the morning, who could blame her?