When Madeleine mentions to me the other day that she does not want to be an astronaut, I know how she feels. The sheer weirdness of getting into a metal tube weighing 912,000 lb and holding 63,705 gallons of fuel at take-off .. with 300 other people .. well , madness, really. And, following ten hours, here I am on the other side of the planet. As I , and all travellers, take for granted : the odds of dying on
this flight 1 in
9.2 million (vs.being murdered in your lifetime 1 in
140 or being struck by lighting 1 in
10,456 or dying in a car crash 1 in
70). Once air-travel was pretty cool, like, hey - somebody will pay for me to go to Cleveland! Now I miss stuff, like Eitan's cup match against Wangas Youth, or hanging about with Madeleine and Sonnet.
Still, on the other side of my journey is Berkeley and my parents+childhood friends, a few timeless running trails and, there in the distance, seen from the bay windows of the house I grew up in, is that defining construction: The Golden Gate Bridge; just beyond her, the Pacific Ocean and the setting sun.
