Approximated time. This is what I wrote on the plane.

2.10 AM. Waking up an hour before my alarm (Africa, by Toto) goes off because my cousin Adam had to pee, and is not at all a quiet person. I tried to get back to sleep, but of course, can not. I perused facebook for a while before neurotically dumping out my entire suitcase an repacking it again to check that I had not forgotten anything. For the eighth time. 

4.05 AM. Approximately. Franz and I leave the house to walk to the lightrail. Being the end of August, the street is pitch black, which leads to an interesting story about a man throwing a baby carseat at Franz one morning as he walked to work. 

4.18 AM. Franz and I get on the lightrail to the airport. We trek my stuff through the airport; up escalators and on trams, until we get to my gate. E9. 

5.06 AM. I search for coffee and postcard stamps. I only find one. I had this, lets see, Vanilla White Chocolate Mocha cooler. Jeez. SO sugary. I think I got energy just from the sugar, not the caffeine. Sitting in this tiny, tiny airplane, I’m regretting my drink choice. 

5.42 AM. The plane starts boarding. Since I’m flying on one of those “extra seat” ticket things, I had to wait until everybody else had gotten on the plane. I’m in seat 19C. I’m the very last seat on the plane, right in between the lavatory and the big whirly thing that ate that guy on the beach in LOST. I do, however, have a great view out the window. 

5.57 AM. Franz knocks on the side of the plane. I was reading my book (Bossypants- Tina Fey) and hear this bang bang bang on the side of the plane. I, of course, jump up (well, try to anyway. It’s difficult to jump out of your seat when you’re already wearing your seat belt.) and look out the window. Franz was standing there in a neon orange vest, grinning hugely and waving. I waved back, but I think the guy in the seat next to me thought I was crazy. Oh, by the way, guy in seat next to me: if you’re reading this over my shoulder, that’s totally fine. I get it. I would too, if you were typing on your computer. 

6.02 AM. The plane starts to back away from the airport and turn down the runway. It seemed a little odd how long it took us to get from the airport to actually taking off, but I guess we were just towards the end of the first wave of planes taking off this morning. Takeoff was actually really pleasant. The sun was just rising, so I got to see lots of light blues, pinks and oranges in the sky. As we got higher in the air (I was surprised at how quickly it happened- then I was surprised at how long we were diagonal in the air) I watched the streets, schools, playgrounds (did you know there’s a parking lot on the roof of the Mall of America?) swimming pools, baseball fields, and so much more get smaller and smaller, and thought to myself “Self, isn’t it crazy how people can make such straight lines so straight for so long?” Really, it’s pretty crazy. You think it’d waver after a few blocks, but no. Those roads just keep going stick straight for miles. 

6.58 AM. Guy across the isle pulls his phone out to listen to music. I decide it’s okay to pull out my computer. I start typing this. At the moment, it’s just in a word document on my computer because, you know, you’re not supposed to use the internet in the sky (why is that? Is it specially reserved for God or something? Jeez God, can’t you just share?) By the time you read this though, I’ll obviously have landed and found some internet to upload this to the interwebs. 

7.20 AM thoughts: “These clouds are very nice to me and the people on this side of the plane. They’re making such lovely patterns and swirls and stuff. That’s nice of them.” And “Geez, this stream of people coming in and out of the bathroom is never ending. Really. It’s like the second someone leaves the bathroom, someone else is pushing past them in the isle to get in. I really wish I wasn’t right next to it. This is going to get really annoying in the next two and a half hours.” “I could do this. Flying a plane doesn’t seem that tough” “I wish I’d thought to take my headphones out of my bag before I pulled this tray down. Now I’m going to have to navigate around this guy’s knee and try to not wake him up.”

8.04 AM. We hit turbulence. Really short. But still. Turbulence.