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According to the little 6-inch screen that protrudes from my armrest, we’re at 31,000 feet. Climbing toward cruising altitude, the big 777 barely feels like it’s moving – but the cloud ceiling, a mile below, reminds me otherwise as it slides beneath us. If that weren’t enough, the screen flicks to a new view that says our ground speed is 550MPH. Edwin McCain is covering Treehouse’s “Losing Tonight” in my headphones.

The fact that my two colleagues and I are returning from Germany a day early doesn’t make me any less homesick, and doesn’t make the trip any shorter: we’re 45 minutes into an 8-hour flight, and to survive the East-to-West time change, you’ve got to stay awake. “Power through it,” I say every time we make this trip. The jury’s still out on how well I’ll be able to resist the urge to sleep – several fellow occupants of business class have slipped the surly bonds of consciousness already…

As my iPod vectors over to “The Kiss” (which is about a lipstick kiss left on the outside of an airplane window) I think about how long it’s been since Kelly and I have flown anywhere together. My mind wanders toward home… It’s a little before 8AM there now – I bet she’s reaching to snooze the alarm clock as I type this. By some combination of careful secrecy and dumb luck, she has no idea I’m here in 15A twenty four hours ahead of schedule. She doesn’t know I’ll be touching down in Rochester right around the time she sits down to dinner, and she won’t expect it when I call to tell her I’m waiting for her on the far side of the front door with a weary grin and a few bottles of German wine.

The pilot banks a bit, and the slivers of sunlight sneaking through the closed windows shift an inch or two. I glance again at the screen: a little over four hours of airtime to go. The meal and movie are over now, and the darkness of the cabin is interrupted only by the glow from reading lights, laptop screens and the galley. Despite how many people you can pack into them, airplanes can be lonely places. But their redemption from our human perspective? Outside the obvious, they enable all the feelings that inevitably go along with travelling: excitement, anxiety, longing, homesickness, and the joy of reunion.

“The Riddle” from Train is playing now:

“I guess we’re big and I guess we’re small…
If you think about it, man you know we’ve got it all.
‘Cause we’re all we’ve got on this bouncing ball…
and I love you free, I love you free so…
Here’s a riddle for you…find the answer:
There’s a reason for the world:
You and I.”