I'm sitting on an airplane -- a Boeing 737-300 -- and there's a hole in the roof. Right above me. It's okay, we're not moving. A mechanics legs are dangling down from the hole above row 8 as he wiggles the rubber, wire and foam around. From what I can gather from the mechanic's conversation with the pilot, he's replacing the lightbulb for the strobe on top of the airplane. Glad someone knows what they're doing, I wouldn't able to make sense of the jumble of wires up there.

On my way back from the West Coast, it has been a fairly typical day traveling through Chicago O'Hare: we circled over Minneapolis for almost an hour waiting for a storm to clear in the Chicago area. We landed only to find that a ground stop had been called because of lightening strikes. So no one was around to wave us into the gate. Now, on the ground, the inbound crew for our aircraft arrived an hour after we were scheduled to leave. Of course, it doesn't really matter... what with the hole in the roof and all.

Back to my book.