Flight Of The Ian V.

"Would you like a window seat or an aisle seat, sir?", the flight attendant asked of me. I replied "might I sit on the wing?", without so much as a blink or even the slightest hint of a smile. Unhesitatingly she fired back, "there are a number of passengers who we'd routinely like to place on the wing, preferably at altitude, but you're not one of them. You're simply too gorgeous to place outside of the plane." A small smile was beginning to form on my face.

Of course this conversation never took place, not even in my brain. Well, not until this morning. Needless to say, I was on an airplane yesterday and it sure looks like I flew over Toronto. This much is true. I flew from Toronto to Fredericton. We took off from Lester's airport in a westerly direction then banked a hard port-side turn until we were heading east for the Maritimes. My view of Toronto was stunning for two and a half reasons:

1) the weather conditions were perfect for sightseeing.
2) I was sitting on the right side of the plane, which happened to be the left.
2.5) I was comforted by not being able to see a single-dawdling-sidewalk-texter below (even though I knew they were there).

The view did suck for one reason and that's because the windows of the plane were less than transparent. I think a toddler, eating potato chips or hand cream, must have sat, or stood, in my seat during the previous flight. On account of Air Canada's belt tightening measures, the windows are only cleaned on years which happen to coincide with the arrival of Halley's Comet. Note: I've booked my flight for July 28, 2061. I'll be 98 by then and my eyesight probably won't be good enough to appreciate clean windows, and the flight attendant won't hit on me. Sigh.

So, forgive me for posting an image with window smears, but smears aside, it's a telling shot of the big city, particularly when analyzing the location of our condo relative to the mass of buildings that line Yonge and Bay Streets. We're just that much east of Yonge to extricate ourselves from much of the concrete madness. In hindsight, our purchase was extremely fortuitous because we are outside of 'the corridor'. Our view of the city is pretty much unimpeded and should stay that way. If you look between our condo and the lake, you'll see mostly low-flying buildings.

Back in Cambridge-Narrows there's not a single tall building. It's glorious. The tallest house in the Village is three and a half storeys tall, I think (owned by a wealthy wine baron). The tallest man-made 'non-dwelling' in the Village wasn't made by a man at all...it's my neighbour's beehive hairdo! It towers above the pines, at least in my sky-scrapin' mind. For a non-dwelling, I seem to dwell upon her beehive a lot.

Oh, Ian, beehive. I mean, behave!

I will. Ahhh....it's good to be back home.