(new here? read this first.)

Hi I’m Daniel. Nice to meet you.

I love traveling. I’ve already mentioned it in this post, and this one, and this one. And this blog is still a baby!

I am terribly happy traveling. I am most comfortable in foreign lands. I would visit anywhere. I like weird food, people yelling at me in languages I don’t understand, different currency, new cultures, and the exhaustion that comes from exploring. I’m envious of Anthony Bourdain. I love to travel, and I always request a window seat.

I daydream on planes. I think about life. I don’t talk to the person next to me. I sometimes play video games. I rarely sleep. I listen to music. A lot. But 99% of the time, I’m looking out the window. I guess, I read sometimes, but you get the idea.

I look at clouds. I try to understand what they’re interpreting. Most of the time they just look like Smurfs. Papa Smurf. Handy Smurf. Vanity Smurf. Rarely Smurfette. It passes the time and lets me think.

I listen for the ‘ding’ after take off for the 10,000 feet indication. That’s when I can listen to music. I feel a part of the plane as it glides 6 miles in the air. I look down on the landscape and imagine the life down there. The scenery always reminds me of paintings. I always have my camera in my hand or have it nearby in the gross seat back pouch thing. I snap away the entire flight looking for something that strikes my fancy. People give me weird looks. I don’t mind. I also love that everyone is a stranger when you travel.

Occasionally, you encounter such beauty, that it stops all thinking. You gaze out the window, mouth agape, looking at one of the most beautiful scenes you’ve ever seen. In this moment, with this image, I felt like I was at the Louvre. Not on a United Airlines regional jet from Chicago. I love discovering beauty found in exploring. And I love to travel, with a camera.

(‘window seat please’ is a reference to a Flickr group I joined a couple of years ago – check it out, here)

window seat please

window seat please

Hey, it’s Casey, and when we started this? I had no idea I was going to talking about death so much. Seriously. Death death, death and now death again.

My aunt died this week. Well, her body died but her very much alive spirit went to heaven. Because for people like her? The only way to go is up.

She spent 48 years as a quadripeligic. She’s now spent four days in heaven. With a perfectly restored body, that can do everything her earthly body couldn’t manage. She used to tell me about this dream she constantly had about running behind a pickup truck through a wheat field. I wonder if there are wheat fields in heaven?

I like to think about what she’s doing up there. If she’s just flopping her legs around at the edge of a pool because she can or if she’s attempting Olympic cloud jumps. I wonder if it makes any difference to her at all. She never really much minded that she couldn’t walk while she was here on Earth, I mean, she got to where she needed to go and if she needed anything it could easily be brought to her.

But still, I wonder what heaven is like. I mean, I know it can’t just be people swathed in gauzy robes playing harps all day. And I can promise you it’s an even better place now that my Aunt Cheryl is there. I’m pretty sure she’s the funniest person in Heaven. I guess when I think about heaven it must feel like all those tiny little magical moments that occur day to day just smooshed together into one eternal day.

My aunt would say that she got hurt because she wasn’t listening. So God sat her down and made her listen.

And she spent every day doing just that. And when I think about it? A lot of my “this is what heaven must be like” moments? Happened when I was with her.