Short flight of wonder

YXU-to-YYZ
London/Toronto, ON
March 2011
Click all photos to embiggen

About these photos: Thematic explores photographic series all week long. Head here for the launch entry, and here for more background on Thematic itself. It won't hurt. Much.

For as long as I have the ability to get on a plane and travel elsewhere, I'll continue to find the experience to be magical. Sure, overwhelming security procedures and onerous fee structures - I have to pay to sit next to my kid? Seriously? - have cut into the glamor that once defined air travel. But once you finish being felt up by Gene the ambiguously dressed security agent and ripped off my a smarmy airline agent, all that's left is to board the plane itself and strap in for the ride.

And what a ride it is. From the moment the engines open up and you hurtle down the runway, it's all about the physics, baby. And what cool physics they are, incredibly simple principles being applied in real life by some of the best engineering humans have yet invented. Yet most passengers are too preoccupied flipping through the SkyMall catalog - I admit that genuine bamboo tiki bar is positively divine, but let's get real, shall we? - to even notice.

I kind of wish more of them would. Because life's pretty short, and we miss most of the fun stuff if we're too busy being busy. (Shades of Bueller, no?) We all need to take a time out - or six - to appreciate the simplicity - or complexity, your call - of being held up in the air by nothing more than a few well-worn principles of aerodynamics. Or anything else we might find magical.

Your turn: What do you find magical? What makes it magical in the first place?