Sitting in the Atlanta airport on Sunday, May 25, waiting to board my flight to Manchester, I wrote the following entry, but never got around to posting it:

I have flown literally a couple of hundred thousand miles in my life. And I know how planes fly; I used to be an aerospace engineering major. The faster air travels, the more pressure it exerts. The top of a wing is curved while the bottom is straight. The air passing by the wing on the bottom goes faster than the air on top. More pressure is applied to the bottom of the wing than to the top, raising the plane into the air. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Hmmm, now I’m not sure. There’s a reason why I stopped being an aerospace engineering student and became an English major.

However, as I sit here in the Atlanta airport looking at the plane that is surely way too small to take me all the way across the Atlantic, I am thinking that in the end the confidence that allows all of us to get onto this multi-ton chunk of metal and extremely flammable liquid comes from a massive, willing suspension of disbelief.

Plus maybe a cocktail or two.