– photographs and messages from inside the Sausurrean Bar –

Posts Tagged: aerial photography


Posts Tagged ‘aerial photography’

Saturday, September 15th, 2018

Greenland Below

Friday, June 17th, 2011

I’ve made it to Memphis

And that’s about all I can say about the city right now, since by the time I got here it was dark, and all I did was pick up my car and head to the hotel to sleep.

The flights here were … one good and one nervewracking, and filled with unexpected events and one not so slight diversion. The thing I did not expect, but that probably no-one else was suprised by, was that one gets to see the New York skyline when flying into Newark. I’d never pondered whether one would be able to do so or not, really, but suddenly being able to glimpse Manhattan and a tiny Statue of Liberty out the window was definitely an unexpected bonus.

A planned 5 hour (with the actual delay 6 hour) layover in Newark meant that I had time to ride the airtrain around for a while, and to figure out the best location for a snapshot of said skyline. (Both photos in this post were taken with my iphone, as my camera was stowed in my luggage and thus out of reach.)

The diversion … well, here’s a photo…

…of what the approach to Nashville looks like from the air. Wait … Nashville? Yep, Nashville. Not only was my flight to Memphis delayed slightly, we also had to divert to Nashville for refuelling on account of a thunderstorm that was sitting right over Memphis and that made landing there impossible. And it really was impossible. I know this first hand. We tried. I think the plane was about 5 minutes (tops) from touchdown when we aborted the attempt. But the view from the plane was spectacular, let me tell you … you could see a strip of bright sky in the distant South, but above and all around us were these black clouds, and lightning was flashing everywhere – I wish I could show you a photo, but my phone was in my jacket in the overhead locker, and by then the plane was shaking, rolling and bucking so much that doing anything but hanging on tight to your armrest (and fighting the urge to laugh maniacally) was impossible. So, no photo.

45 turbulent minutes later we were in Nashville, spent an hour on the ground refuelling, and then another 45 turbulent minutes saw us back in Memphis, where it was just before 10pm at that time and still raining heavily, and I was really rather done with the day.

But now it’s 6am and I think the rain has stopped for now, so I’ll be off to do some exploring! TTYL!