Penmachine

I've just come from sitting in the yard, reading, for more than an hour, with the kids passing around a volleyball and swinging on the swings. This long Victoria Day holiday weekend, Vancouver is having an early heat-wave blast of summer, with temperatures reaching 30° C here in the suburbs, so we're taking advantage of it. It certainly feels—if only temporarily—like a full summer day, since the sun set around 8 p.m., the same time it will in July.

When the wind is westerly, as it is today, airplanes coming in from the Pacific to Vancouver Airport fly a slow U shape, east across the city, turning south, and then coming in to land flying westward over Richmond to the south. This evening, several massive 747s went almost directly over our house in Burnaby, as they often do, high enough not to be disturbing but low enough that we can read their tail insignia, then watch them bank slightly and make their wide turns over the suburbs further east.

Jumbo jets, like all aircraft, continue to astound me, and it's a pity so many of us spend most of our time complaining when we talk about air travel. Journeys that used to take weeks or months now take hours. They have changed the world, and I get to watch them begin and end in the sky over my house every day.

Labels: airport, travel, vancouver, weather