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Shares
As we file into the plane I'm grateful that unlike usual I have next to no hand luggage. Not even a hand bag. If I'm honest I usually stretch the limits of the airline luggage weight. And size. And number of bags. Most of the time I sneak by without suspicion. Flights to Auckland and Christchurch are the easiest because the overhead lockers are so big that there's never a problem. These little planes though... my carry on suitcase is too large and heavy on the lightest of trips. I had a close call, I think it was the last time I flew to Hamilton. My first time taking my carry on suitcase on a small plane, having recently upgraded from the highscool duffel bag look-a real jet setter now you know? However my ego was shot down a few knotches after trying to pretend my suitcase wasn't that heavy and squeezing down the isle. I didn’t even try to lift into the over head compartment, even though I was the first in my row, there were other people on the plane and I'm not about public displays of my overall life struggle. Disaster struck when I tried to slide my suitcase under the seat in front, realising instantly that it was just not going to happen. The seats were too close together to be able to lay my bag down between them. My nightmare was soon to become a reality. I was going to have to admit to the air hostess that I'd breached the bag limit and ask her to assist me. How embarrassing. She might give me a condescending speech. She might charge me extra. Just then a women in the opposite row arrived with a suitcase the same size as mine. She'd done this once or twice before. I watched in my perhepuals as she turned her bag on a diagonal and slid it effortlessly beneath the seat. YES! My Warehouse suitcase would totally do that that too! I tipped it up behind the seat so that it was resting on on one corner and was then able to angle park my bag under the seat! And we were off! I continued on like the jet setter anyone would have believed I was. I even researched the Air NZ planes, working out the plane I was in was likely to be the smallest I'd ever fly on and since I'd cracked the diagonal bag slide I was ready for anything. Now, taking off towards the South Island the Q300 propellers speed to a blur. White wash clings to every jaggard southern edge of the North Island as we loop around to the west, a way I've never flown before. The city sprawls beneath. An erratic blanket of boxes over Wellington’s hilly mass. The white matchsticks of the wind farm are soilders of the new eco-age... The familiar layout of Hutt Valley... Still flying above the likes of Porirua, either we are so low in our tiny lego plane or the weather is so nice that landmarks are still able to be recognised. I think it might be a bit of both. A line is visible in the blue mass of ocean. On a day like today the west coastline is beautiful, it makes you wonder why a million baches aren't propped up against the westerly wind. The highway that I know I would be on if I were driving home streaks beneath me, it seems so much straighter from above. I wonder if the pilots ever get sick of the journey. I know I don’t.