I’m typing this at 20,000 feet. OK, actually, I have no idea how high we are. I have a window seat, and the clouds are below us. Above us, a blindly bright sun, and blue sky, nothing but blue sky.
I’m on an $86 nonstop flight from Rochester, NY to Tampa, FL on Southwest. In a car, it’s about 24 hours worth of driving, about $120 worth of gas, about $100 worth of food, $150 for a decent hotel, and that’s $370. Not to mention two days worth of work behind the wheel.
There’s no one else in my row. The plane is about 65% full. I wonder how many people they need on the plane to break even, at this low rate.
$86 is an absolute steal, and I was lucky to get that rate. I flew up for an illness in the family, and after a horrible week of dealing with that, I’m headed back home. My wife is meeting me at the airport in Tampa. I wonder if it’s too late to book a room at the Marriott at Tampa International? Perhaps that’s a bit too personal for a keyboard blog.
In NY, my brother had a Casio keyboard with full-sized keys, but it wasn’t touch sensitive and there was no sustain pedal. I still played it. It did have a “sustain” function where the sound of the note would linger and fade a half second after releasing the key. It was surprisingly useless.
The funny thing about lack of touch sensitivity is that every accidental key press is 100% full volume. Barely bump a key and it’s a FULL VOLUME NOTE, just like you meant to press it. It’s like playing music in all caps. No room for error.
The keyboard had a piano which sounded like a piano, an electric piano which sounded like an 8 bit sample of 2 op FM, a harpsichord which serves no useful purpose except comedic value, an organ which sounded bad, and some strings which actually sounded pretty good.
You might wonder why I typed this blog post. Honesty is the best policy, so here it is: I’m bored. I listened to a Steven Wilson album and skipped the song I didn’t like.
In the next aisle over, there’s an old person with a tablet watching some video without headphones. The flight attendant just told him that he couldn’t do that, so he turned it off. Toward the back of the plane, there’s a baby who periodically screams. But I’ve flown before, so I’ve got Shure in-ear monitors which block out 97% of the foolishness.
Something about flying makes me a bit sleepy. The sound of the engines, maybe. This plane, a 737, has two jet engines, and I’m told it can safely fly with just one of them working, though I would think that would cause us to fly in circles. Apparently not. Since 1990, there have been over 200 instances of a plane being forced to land with just one engine. There were no incidents. A 737 can take off and land with just one engine, though it’s not ideal. When a 737 loses an engine, it lands immediately at the closest airport. Just because it “can” fly with one engine doesn’t mean it should.
Well, anyway, that’s all for now. I’m going to put on some previously downloaded music and close my eyes. Tonight or tomorrow or sometime I’ll upload this to my blog. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.