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400 m.p.h. on Autopilot: (An Ode to My Family)

Christmas 2011:

Swear to god, on the entire flight from Milwaukee to Los Angeles, I didn’t notice a single cloud in the sky! Not even a fair weather cumulus!

A Christmas miracle?

After departing Billy Mitchell International, I traced I-94 West from my window seat:

North of the interstate, hazy shades of white and grey, while life to the south held on to its drab, brown-green fall-decay.

We blew past Madison’s isthmus in about 15 minutes.

Beautiful.

I’ll be honest. The lack of snow in Milwaukee this year has been fine by me.
To hell with a white Christmas!

You see, non-northerners,
excessive snow in December makes an already-too-long winter ETERNALLY-too-long.

The rest of the flight went by quickly, despite some minor adversity:

Yes, a three-year-old kept kicking my seat.
Yes, the same three-year-old had a one-year-old brother.
Yes, they both cried for the entire last hour of the flight.

No, this didn’t bother me.

Not one bit.

The attractive woman with noticeable dandruff flakes?
Now, THAT bothered me for some reason.

What an attractive woman!
What a damn shame.

My point is this:

Those weren’t my babies crying on the airplane.
If those were my babies, these documented observations would be totally different, obviously.

You see, dear reader, as a fifth grade public school teacher,
my tolerance level for just about anything a child does on an airplane is unbelievably high.

Cry away, child; kick that seat!

Honestly, I just don’t care.

Do I have to change your diapers?

Nope.

Am I responsible for cooling your jets?

Absolutely not.

Do I have to teach either of you how to add and subtract?

Sorry!

These kids won’t bother me,
because they’re not mine, and I’M ON VACATION!

The $13.00 Wi-Fi charge?

That bothered me more than anything.

My Netflix movie cut out every ten minutes, forcing a complete (and slow) reload.

(First world problems, I know.)

With my eyes forced back out the window, I noticed more:

After Madison’s isthmus, Iowa and Nebraska took over.

Endless miles of flat, fertile earth,
with human engineered roads outlining human engineered crops.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the Rockies popped up.

Trust me, dear reader, their majestic beauty pales in comparison to their sheer enormity.

After the mountain show, winter-bleached canyons dominated the landscape,
with endless expanses of desert burnt reds contrasting with abstract grays and whites.

(Words do me no justice here.)

I noticed the magnitude of Las Vegas upon first glance,
but then marveled at how quickly the vastness of the desert swallowed Vegas whole.

(The desert eats pieces of shit like Vegas for breakfast.)

During another reload of the Pearl Jam documentary,
I scanned the airspace around the Las Vegas airport:

I expected to see dozens of approaching and departing airplanes,
(many of them from Japan?)
but I only saw one, and I had no idea what country it was from.

Earlier in the journey, two other airborne vessels with filthy exhaust trails caught my eye:

When I see another jet midair, inevitably, my thoughts drift to both sets of pilots reading their newspapers and drinking coffee, while the rest of us, oblivious to their coffee preferences,
cruise along at 400 miles per hour on auto pilot.

And then there’s the gradual 45 minute descent into Southern California:

(Along with a descent into present tense, apparently.)

California mountains signal the end of the perpetual desert,
and then, like a phoenix rising from the ashes,
ENDLESS SPRAWL!

The limitless expanses of Southern California’s suburban sprawl are so incredibly beautiful to me!
(That’s right, I said beautiful.)

12 million souls in the greater Los Angeles area alone.
22 million in the entire Southern California mega-region.

22 million!

For a frame of reference, the greater Milwaukee area houses about a million souls.

One million! . . . . (And that includes Hales Corners!)

When I fly over Southern California’s vastness,
I am awestruck at how well this giant machine operates.

Relatively speaking, when we take into consideration the actual number of inhabitants,
it’s a minor miracle more shit doesn’t go wrong on a daily basis!

The vast, vast majority of people here enjoy consistent, safe shelter,
easy access to food, water, and electricity,
and, lest we forget, unlimited access to the wondrous luxury of modern indoor plumbing units.

There are (relatively) very few major malfunctions, car accidents, crimes, or suicides.

Very few earthquakes.

The vast majority of people here travel through their daily lives unscathed,
with their millions upon millions of basic needs satisfied every minute of the day,
every hour of the night.

Daily.

Annually.

It’s all so beautiful to me.

Most of the 22 million people here abide by the laws,
they almost always stop at red lights,
and, generally, most folks do in fact yield appropriately
(even if they don’t use their turn signals).

To me, Southern California is a gorgeous, well-choreographed dance of human spirits, who,
for the most part, have no idea how to drive in snow.

Let’s drape Southern California with a routine Wisconsin snowfall:

Let’s just say three to four inches of heavy, wet snow during a random Wednesday evening commute.

I can only imagine what would happen.

(Honestly, I can’t imagine.)

So, these kids behind me are still kicking my seat, and they’re still crying,
and I still don’t care because instead of worrying about where they’re going to middle school, I’m gazing happily out the window.

By my calculations, by the time we land, we”ll have passed over thousands of neighborhoods,
with millions upon millions of American souls totally unaware of our passing existence, all positioned neatly inside symmetrical street grids, with scatterings of sports complexes and commercial real-estate,
parking lots and freeway pipelines, cemeteries and golf courses.

And then the much less beautiful LAX warehouses take over.

The hydraulic grind of the landing gear tells us we’re close:

Wheels touch down.
Reverse thrust.

“Welcome to Los Angeles.”

(And back to storytelling in past tense, apparently.)

I’m here because my younger brother and his wife recently delivered their first baby:

Laguna Niguel.
Immediate family only.
Catholic Baptism.
Fun!

I’m certainly not Catholic anymore, but, yes, it was fun because not only do I love everyone in my immediate family, but I love who they married. My immediate family was,
is, and always will be awesome because THAT’S WHO WE ARE!

After checking in with everyone back at the Cal Mar Hotel in Santa Monica,
I decided to walk three blocks to the Pacific Ocean to catch some solitude and the sunset.

Temperatures were in the mid-70’s,
and, coming from the dead of winter in Milwaukee, every degree felt absolutely wonderful!

I noticed a ton of people were out and about, and, luckily, I scored a bench on a bluff overlooking Santa Monica’s massive beach. To my right, the hills of Malibu, and to my left, a smoggy marine layer developed above the pier’s famous ferris wheel.

I noticed three different groups of people playing volleyball next to the ocean.
Not one group playing volleyball . . . Three!
Not three people playing volleyball.
Three full groups playing volleyball on Christmas-fucking-Eve!

I also noticed hundreds of folks running,
walking,
skateboarding,
and riding their bicycles.

This is Christmas in Los Angeles:
Tis’ the season to do whatever you would normally do on a beautiful sun-drenched day.

It certainly didn’t look or feel like Christmas to me.

You see, dear reader, I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Nobody is riding their bike for pleasure,
or setting up an outdoor volleyball match on Christmas Eve.

In Wisconsin, we bunker down:

We gather inside small rooms to eat, drink, and be merry.
We gather inside small rooms to watch the Green Bay Packers!

I admit it.
I enjoyed watching the sun set over the mighty Pacific.

I took a ton of pictures,
and the solar radiation felt great on my pale Midwestern face,
but nothing there on Santa Monica’s beach felt like Christmas to me.

After the giant star buried itself below the Pacific horizon,
I hightailed it back to the Cal-Mar Hotel,
the only place in Southern California that felt like Christmas to me.

THE END