St. John's, NL - Jan 24-25, 2006 - Arrival: 1:30 AM

Flying into St. John's is something I've done a couple of times, but this was my first night flight. It was a pretty amazing thing.

The Rock is a huge piece of real estate. Approaching from the West over the island you pass over almost the entire width en route to St. John's. Tonight it was a cloudless night. We were out among the stars - all of them, it seemed - and below the sporadic grid of lights on Newfoundland traced random patterns from one community to the next, along the highways connecting them. We cruised overhead, caught between the lights in the air, and those on the ground. Newfoundland twinkled all around us; where a town stopped and the night sky started totally blurred. Everything in Newfoundland was spread out on the ground underneath us, as blinking lights, while everything else was spread out above us as twinkling stars.

I'm in St. John's for two days with an important mission from work, as well as a suicide mission from work, and a surprisingly full social agenda. As usual this trip is multi-purpose.

The flight landed miraculously, successfully on one pass.