Buckets Hold More Than Water

Carl Sagan, one of the most brilliant men of the 20th Century, described Earth like this: 


"Our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos, of which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky." 

If the Earth is a mote of dust, what am I?

Easy: I'm just me. 

Here is my list of things I want to do before I die, in no particular order:

Publish/finish my novels.

Go hang gliding.

Touch dry ice.

Introduce my cat, Goblin to my big brother and sister-in-law's cat, Chloe.

Fly on the Virgin Galactic (anybody want to give me $200,000?)

Write about flying on the Virgin Galactic.

Have Elton John sing "Rocketman" to me.

Go to Alaska and meet a bear.

Be a Verizon Cell Phone Tower Fix-it Man.

Take a cosmology class.

Meet Terry Pratchett.

Learn how to drive a tractor trailer and/or a backhoe.

Hug my mom. Pull my dad's beard.

Buy a nice writing desk and put it in a room with a window and a rug and a book case.

Watch my little brother play a show on drums.

See the aurora borealis, possibly while I'm in Alaska.

Any more suggestions?

Circling the Dragon Sphere

My favourite thing about flying is everything. I have no issues with airports. I have no issues with security. I love taking off and landing, and turbulence just makes my life that much more interesting and exciting.

The thing about flying is the space under me, the space above me, the space around me. There's so much space when you're 50,000 feet above the surface of the Earth.

I like to imagine flying, with nothing and no one around. To be completely alone, with only wetness of the clouds or the occasional greeting of a bird; with the landscape moving slowly underneath me, the planet rolling on it's axis, spinning the trees until their leaves fly off into the never ending universe. Everything else is stuck to the dirt and rocks, at the mercy of the dragon sphere with fire churning in her guts, lights shining in her eyes, and dirt under her fingernails.

Flying is like making the Earth turn faster. It's like running on a ball. I can see the green and the blue and the colours upon colours spinning underneath me faster and faster as I speed forward at the speed of sound. I can see the black inimitable magnitude of space over my head, stretching out infinitely, past the trees and the clouds and birds, past the ozone, and past the capsule of safety surrounding the dragon sphere.

And suddenly I want to go to space, to feel the space, to be succumbed into all that is nothing but the vast darkness and silence which is neither dark nor silent, but rather filled with the homes of a million million faces visible only as pinpricks of light an incomprehensible lifetime away.

So if you happen to have a spare $200,000 in your pocket, I hope you find it in your heart to buy me a ticket on the Virgin Galactic.