Week 6: Airport

So, last weekend I went to competition with my Indian dance team at Penn State. We flew out late Thursday night and had a layover very early Friday morning in Detroit. As we were walking through the airport with our luggage in hand, walking along one of those flat escalator things (I don't know what to actually call it), I realized that there was this light show going on all around us. We were in a sort of tunnel and on both sides of us, the walls had these long panels that were filled with colored light. At first I thought it was just lit as I first saw it, in the blues and pale greens, and it gave me a slight sense of being underwater, or walking past an aquarium. However, as we walked, I realized that the lights were changing color. The blue and green would rapidly change to a bright red, back to blue, then quickly back to red, and it was almost like a pulsating heart. The lights cast a colorful glow on the ceiling above as well, and the entire tunnel was brilliant. Now, it could have been the fact that I had just pulled an all- nighter on the plane, or that I am easily amused, but I thought this was amazing to see. I also thought it was a bit weird that this much time and money was spent creating this lighting show in a tunnel in an airport, but I'm not complaining. Unfortunately, I had left my memory card for my camera behind on accident so I had to ask a team mate to record this video for me. She didn't want to use up much of her memory, so I only captured a few short seconds of what I saw, but hopefully you get the point.

Besides this, while I was on the next plane, half asleep, my attention was drawn to the window as I saw a flash of light. It seemed like there was another mini light show going on on the wing of the plane. The front of the wing would first have quick flashes of white light, almost like a strobe effect, and this would be followed by a big wash of red light on top of the wing. These lights just kept alternating back and forth, and of course I couldn't help but watch for a minute before falling back asleep. Finally, my favorite part of flying on a plane at night is being able to look down at the cities below. It is filled with such dazzling lights, and I always find it breathtaking. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take pictures of either of these things to show you, but I will always remember what they were like. I guess the point of this blog is that I never realized how much lighting you can be exposed to while simply catching a flight.