This morning I flew to Miami.

We made the trip on one of them small planes, the ones where they make you actually walk out on the tarmac and climb the little set of stairs to get on board. The planes with just one seat on either side of the aisle. The kind with just one stewardess. The ones with propellers.

Some people hate these airplanes. They complain about having to ride the little bus from the plane to the terminal, about having to hand over their larger type carry on bags at the gate. These buzzstrippers cite a whole bunch of scary statistics about being more likely to crash in a smaller plane, etc...

But for me, the boarding discomforts and increased likelihood of death are mitigated by the fact that in a small plane you never forget that you're flying. Flying. Through the air. Like actually zooming around 30,000 feet up in the fucking sky in something the size of a limousine.

Have all airline passengers forgotten about this? Last time I checked, people fork over 10 bucks a pop to go to the county fair and ride the ferris wheel or gravitron. We pay $40,000 a pop to ride a little higher in our SUV's. But when we get an opportunity to climb into a machine and go screaming into the sky at 200+ mph, we just yawn and bitch about not getting free tomato juice anymore.

Am I the only one who thinks this is fucked up?

I guess in your bigger type jet, when you walk straight from the terminal into the fuselage without even seeing the outside of the plane, sit four deep in a windowless middle row, and watch the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com, maybe it's easy not to notice the grandeur of your voyage. Maybe if it wasn't for the seatbelt sign and ear popping you wouldn't even notice when you'd left the ground.

But I doubt it, because some people get anxious about flying. If people were able to forget they were flying and one of these people suddenly remembered, all tucked away in their middle row of a jumbo jet, that they were up 30,000 feet in the air in a glorified Cadillilac Escalade without any control over their fate or direction, wouldn't they freak out? Wouldn't you get someone (at least every once in while) jumping out of their seat and running up and down the aisle screaming in panic to "let me off this goddamn plane!"

And that hardly ever happens. Especially since I quit dropping acid on weekdays. 

So we must all notice that we're flying and just ignore it, either by choice or by habit. It worries me that we can ignore flying. I wonder, if we're too wrapped up in being bored or Iphoning or admiring the world's finest carafe in Sky Mall magazine to miss flying, what other things are we missing?

We only get one life, and whether it ends in a small plane crash, or an eyelash drug overdose, or god forbid with one of the less sexy pathologies, it's still going to end one day. But everyday before that one has the potential for amazement, you just have to remember to lift open that little plastic shutter and look out the window.

That's why I like the little planes. Because they rock and shake and creak. Because before they lift off you almost start to think they aren't going to make it before the runway ends. Because everyone gets window. But really because you can never forget to appreciate the fact that you are soaring across the sky. And soaring is awesome. At the very least it's more awesome than a ferris wheel.

Pass me the mushrooms.

On a serious note, this morning I envisioned a cool new tradition I hope to start in airplanes all over the country. I got the idea because I was remembering how, as a child at summer camp, we used to sing the camp cheer whenever our bus would pull into the property. I think it can work for airplanes. 

What if every city had a cheer, or better yet a theme song? And what if everyone on the airplane sang it right as the plane landed? It would be a great way to get pumped about landing, and to get to know a little about the city you were visiting. Or if you were arriving home, it could be like a totally heartwarming homecoming.

To this end, I seriously contemplated singing a couple verse of Will Smith's "Welcome to Miami" as we touched down at MIA this morning.

Party in the city where the heat is on!