I imagined parenthood as a clammy never-ending coach flight, the kind that used to leave me feeling like I'd give 20 years of my life for an hour alone in a clean hotel room.
OK, so I've just spent a number of hours on domestic flights, the kind that show sitcoms on screens down the middle of the aisle.
I just traveled from New York to New Delhi and used a few of my own tricks to diffuse the hardship of extremely long airplane flights, the kind that can ruin the first day of your vacation, and your final destination.
Local papers in Richfield, Utah, Des Moines, Iowa, Elgin, Illinois, Austin, Texas, Miami, Florida, and so on place by place across significant swaths of the country have run stories about dying hometown "heroes" who have participated in these flights, a kind of nothing-but-the-best-in-corporate-sponsorship for the last of the "Greatest Generation".
Most important, I would be able to take a night flight and lie kind of flat.
The Bion-M1 mission is "the longest flight of its kind in the Russian science program's 40-year history," according to the news Web site Space.com.com
To hear them descanting, to see them wheeling above the river in graceful, droop-winged flight was a kind of ecstasy.
"We've had a run on flight suits, the kind George Bush wore," said Richard Geist, a manager at Uncle Sam's, an Army-Navy store in Manhattan.
That's way too young, especially for someone who, like all astronauts, is assumed to be a paragon of health and who, having survived the rigors of space flight, possesses a kind of honorary immortality.
There is an invitation to a costume party, and some information about a young girl who is coming to visit in ParisNher flight time, the kind of work she would like to do when she arrives.
