The Longest Day

So, you folks know that I rarely post about the day job, but I just had the longest day, spent on, as it happens, the longest day of the year.

I spent yesterday in LA for auditions for voice talent for a future project. And while everything was really great down there, what I want to talk about was the trip.

Leave here at 4 AM for a 6AM flight, 700+miles to LA, spent the entire time encased in a recording studio until about 6PM, back to LAX for a 9PM flight, then back another 700+ miles to Seattle and thence to bed by Midnight. I must have gone completely old-guy, because the very technology and organization that got me there, set up, and back has me amazed. Not just "big metal plane fly in sky" but the entire process where a 1500 mile trip leaves you back at the starting point in a single day. It just all worked. And the seats in the Alaska Air jet were pretty comfortable, even for those of us who are a bit wide-hipped.

But what was really cool about the flight was passing over Mount St. Helens and San Francisco. Mount St. Helens was perfect in the morning sun, the crater smoking and the huge rising shark fin clearly visible over the rim of the crater. San Fransico we passed over at night, its perfect square-headed peninsula gridded with lights, making it a city that is instantly recognizable in the dark from the air. (Pittsburgh and Chicago are similar in this regard - Seattle is not).

And since it was Summer Solstice - the sun was up by the time I reached the airport at 4:30, and as we flew back north, we flew into a retreating sunset, such that the northwestern sky was still be soft blue when made our final descent into Seattle.

In other words, it was pretty cool.

More later,