Every single time I look out the window and over the wing (I always get that seat), my stomach repeats it's futile attempt to remain earthbound while the rest of my body - and 20,000 tons of steel - depart the runway.

Since the beginning, thousands of years of human civilization only looked up towards the sky. They only ever got to see the clouds from the bottom. While my grandfather flew in planes for a living, his father never set foot in one. HE never dreamed the children that would one day sit on his boy's knees, might actually get to see the sun set over the TOPS of the clouds. "Impossible," he might have said. "No papa..." I whisper back in time "...it's beautiful... and it happens every day."

Today is 9-13. Friday the 13th to be precise - one year and two days after you know when. I'm seated comfortably and despite the omen(s), I'm quite secure in the belief that my plane will land as intended. Here I am, making my plans, scribbling away and snapping photos at 30,000 feet. Today I will travel farther in a few hours than 99% of my ancestors did in their whole life. I'm a child of the 21st century, completely at ease with doing the impossible. The casually miraculous is my birthright.

But "one year later" I'm a little surprised at the number of people who still won't fly these days. I've gotten more than a few wide-eyed stares the past couple of weeks since announcing my flight plans. As if frozen in another age, there are people today who give me the same look you might expect from my great-grandfather - if someone told him they would be "flying" from New Mexico to California! Apparently, some these days no longer believe in the miracle of flight.

Yes I know - just as well as you do - that it could happen again...

And I know, if I run with this I might poke an eye out. And of course if I try to build something nice, some bully might come along knock it down. But is that alone really reason enough not to play in the sand... ever again? Of course there's wisdom in caution, when appropriate. However, there is NONE in paranoia. And God forbid, we honor the dead by refusing to live ourselves. Nobody ever gave their lives so that others would remain in prison, but so they might be truly free.

So despite that familiar moment during lift-off when my stomach just has to remind me, "this shouldn't be happen-ninnng," I truly, truly love to fly. Not that I'm reckless by any means, but people... there's a world of difference between dangling without a net, and walking outside without an umbrella. One is just plain stupid, the other usually quite invigorating!

You see flying is not the real miracle I speak of. Living is. We don't know what's to come, or how long we have. But today I am alive, and so are you. So live. Build. Fly. Steal a kiss. Run with something you shouldn't. Or perhaps even someone.

I've been doing it for a modest 34 years, and honestly, I do run into a bit of turbulence at times. But every day, I still think it's a miracle.