As I watched Meek’s Cutoff with my mom, fiancee, and stepdad on what had been a rainy afternoon in Virginia Beach, I happened to glance out the window to find the clouds scattered enough to let in an odd orange glow from the sun as it made its move toward the horizon that hid behind the trees which rose from beyond the lake that lay at the edge of our backyard. The film, a gripping closeup on the different faces of panic set against the story of a caravan of wagon-riding pioneers lost somewhere off the Oregon Trail, had arrived at one of its several severe night scenes that leave the screen almost entirely devoid of image, so I wasn’t missing too much as a I focused my gaze outside. I hadn’t been back home to Virginia in two years and, after four days in town, I knew this would be the last sunset I’d see there for some time to come and it became necessarily special. I took in what I could and did my best to secure a picture of it in my mind for the foreseeable future.
At 6:30 the next morning, I was in the last row of a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 on the runway of Norfolk Int’l Airport (ORF) preparing for takeoff amid those last moments of night that tend to linger at the beginning of winter days. For me, preparation is fairly simple:
- Place hand on fiancee’s hand to relieve the anxiety that tends to come when I’m about to ascend the tens of thousands of feet necessary to get anywhere these days.
- Imagine the sort of loving, comforting smile I hope I’d give her if something went wrong.
- Look out the window and focus on whatever beautiful views I can find.
Now, being in the last row of any plane means having a shitty seat:
- Your seat doesn’t lean back though the one in front of you does.
- You’re the last to be served your complimentary beverage.
- You’re the last to exit the plane.
- If you’re lucky, it smells like you’re about to die of carbon monoxide poisoning.
- If you’re not lucky, it smells like someone just took a crap right behind you because they did because that’s where the lavatories are.
On an MD-80, it also means that you have a massive jet engine just outside your tiny window completely blocking your view, so on this particular morning, the best I could find was a small slice of window a few rows in front of me on the opposite side of our fully-booked flight. As the captain pushed the throttle forward, I focused on my sliver of starry sky and saw it touched by the first glow of twilight’s indirect bloom. The wheels lost contact with the tarmac and we climbed thousands of feet before a minute had gone, raising our perspective in respect to the horizon so quickly it caused the sunrise to come like a time-lapse. Soon we were at cruising altitude with the westerly course of our flight and the earth’s rotation combining to change the type of speed-effect on our sunrise from fast to slow-mo. For hours, we floated through the special gradients between yellow, red, and blue that are unique to the edges of day, caught in an everlasting daybreak.
MATH BREAK
Formula for calculating the speed of the earth’s rotation at a given latitude: Speed of Earth at equator (1,674.4 km/hr) x cos(latitude)
Latitude of ORF: 36.89472∘
Latitude of DFW (destination for connection to BUR): 32.89694∘
Average rotational speed of earth between ORF and DFW: 1,372.496352372164 km/hr
Conversion factor for km to miles: .621371192
Average rotational speed of earth between ORF and DFW: 852.829694489143572 mph
Cruising speed of MD-80: 504 mph
Percent decrease in perceived speed of sunrise on flight from ORF to DFW: 59.0973793779428%
