Charlotte to London

To begin our journey to Britain and Ireland, we drove to Charlotte on this hot August afternoon, first south through Walhalla and kudzu-covered South Carolina and the bright blue waters of Lake Keowee, then westward into North Carolina, sticky with midsummer southern humidity.  We had been told by our British friend Brian, "Take an umbrella," but we really did not know what else to expect meteorologically.  We checked in at the Holiday Inn, which offers vehicle storage in a secure parking lot and is only a mile from the Charlotte Douglas International Airport and our direct flight to Heathrow.  We had been instructed by our travel agent to take everything in single suitcases, not to exceed fifty pounds, plus a small carry-on each.  This did not seem like enough luggage for a 23-day journey through Britain and Ireland!

All night we could hear the sounds of arrivals and departures.  A search on Google told me that the Charlotte airport is the fifth busiest in the nation, with 543,944 take-offs and landings each year; that works out to 1480 per day, or 62 per hour, one right after another!  It became ultimately a soothing kind of sound, and as we fell asleep, I imagined that I could tell the difference between departures, with their roar of acceleration and upward climbing and miraculous flight, and arrivals, the decelerating taper of landing on solid ground again.

To many Americans, travel by air is routine, as ordinary as commuting by bus or taxi or train.  But I have only flown twice in my life before, the first time 15 years ago when we flew to London for a week-long visit to England, and then in 2011 when we flew to Boston to run the marathon.  I am not afraid of air travel as some seem to be, but at the same time I am not accustomed to it.  I have visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk and I understand the principles of flight.

Still, I continue to marvel in a childlike way at the sheer miracle of flight, of a 250-ton aircraft lifting magically and effortlessly into thin air.  Did Orville and Wilbur ever consider what their brave and primitive little craft, no more than a motorized kite after all, would eventually become?