come fly with me

Happy New Year Urban Sketchers! This should be a fun and sketchtastic year. To round off 2010 I subjected myself to a couple of ten-hour-plus ordeals called ‘flying across the Atlantic’. I hate flying, I’m not a fan of airports, I hate the stress of ever-decreasing baggage allowances, I hate those little plastic pots of water they give you, I hate squeezing out of my seat at an inhuman angle to go to the bathroom only to find the lady with the drinks trolley is coming down the aisle, and I really hate that my ears always hurt for days afterwards. Thankfully sketching helps me relax. Since several other Urban Sketchers have sketched in the air lately (Gabi, Lapin, etc) I decided I had to do some too. I even unwittingly did mine right above Scotland, as Gabi had done (you can tell from the little map), which is as good a place to sketch as any. I avoided all of the terrible snow which came later that week (when I say avoided, I mean I didn’t fly into it; I did however get stuck in it while on my way to an air musuem, which is ironic) (and I did sketch in it too; another post, perhaps). After two and a half weeks back home in London, which for some reason was stuck in the last Ice Age all over Christmas, the reliable British rain came and thawed out Heathrow airport enough for me to endure the long flight home to California. I hate flying. But at least I wasn’t the poor guy sitting in front of my son, who has now grown tall enough to kick the seat for hours on end. Small mercies…

by Pete Scully