Lady Gaga Trip: Monday Daytime
Observations from Monday, June 6, 2011
Soon after Jim and I boarded our plane to Philadelphia, at a little after 11:00 a.m., I tweeted that the plane had propellors. It was a Dash 8-100/200. Propellors scare me. They look like if something went wrong, they could whip into the plane and take out a bunch of people. Of course if that happened, the very fact that the propellor was off would not matter as much as the rushing of the plane toward the earth.
No more than 15 minutes after take off, the farms and roads that scuffed the earth below me had fallen away and what remained was a dense carpet of dark green as far as the eye could see, the Allegheny National Forest.
The plane seemed to be following the I-80 route, and it was interesting to view the route that I often take to State College from a different perspective. Just as I was thinking that, the pilot announced that we were cruising at 17,000 feet and that State College lay below. Indeed, I saw the stadium, the Bryce Jordan Center, and our beloved Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center where we stay twice a year for the Penn State iMBA Program’s Term 8 residencies.
Past State College, the mountains run in long strips, forming gently curved parallel lines north and south. The Susquehanna River, wide, muddy, and meandering, was marked by islands in clusters. Mines carve tiers into mountainsides, and some farmlands do the same.
A little more than an hour after we took off from Erie, the pilot announced that everyone should stay seated as we approached a population of clouds. The flight attendant said that we were starting our descent and would pick up a few bumps along the way. A few bumps was an understatement. A plane with propellors gets jostled quite dramatically by turbulence.
We landed just fine, if not a little screechy and bumpy, grabbed some lunch in the F concourse, and soon boarded another propellor job to LaGuardia. I wasn’t thrilled about heading back into the turbulent sky, but that flight was not too bad.
We had made a reservation with the extremely glamorous Super Shuttle online and traveled on the rear bench of the van with a total of four people in a space with seatbelts for three. One of our seatmates was claustrophobic. We made conversation with her and she got through the experience just fine. Safely at the hotel, we finally had a moment to breathe and think about what we might like to do during our short stay in NYC.
All Posts About the Lady Gaga Experience:
Lady Gaga Trip: Monday Daytime
Lady Gaga Trip: Monday Evening
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