Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we took our first plane ride and arrived unharmed. While my wife spent the week working in Colorado, I spending the week as a bonus vacation in Colorado Springs, trying to find new things to do that we didn’t already do on our 2012 road trip. Short, on-location MCC entries have consequently been this week’s theme.

Tonight we flew home from Denver, and boy, are my everythings tired.

Our second-ever flight this Friday evening had a few differences from our Sunday morning groundbreaking event, even though both were through Southwest. This time the flight crew banter contained zero punchlines. Our free snacks were different varieties. The air seemed more turbulent. Boarding took a lot longer because some passengers couldn’t handle the “one carry-on bag plus one small item” maximum carrying capacity and were putting their “small” items such as overstuffed backpacks and ski equipment into the overhead compartment instead of under the seats per the rules, thus effectively stealing storage space from honest folks who can read and plan better than these travel hooligans did.

Also, this time we flew at night and I got a window seat. The above photo was one of my least worst attempts to shoot anything in-flight out the window using either the camera or the phone. It may be hard to tell, but that’s downtown Indianapolis toward the upper-left, as seen from the northwest as our plane circled around to approach the northeast side of our airport. I picked this shot to finish out the week-long live-blog miniseries because I like nighttime lights and the blurriness of the nearer pinpricks mirrors my current mental state on multiple levels.

Between the general travel fatigue and the temporary hearing damage that was not a problem on Sunday morning, I’m pretty well drained and struggling to stay awake while typing this. We now have another 400-500 pics to upload and sort, many of which we’ll be sharing in the weeks ahead, alternating between the 2015 Road Trip series and my other usual geek-hobby thoughts and indulgences. I have so much material on hand that I could retroactively join the blogosphere’s November NaBloPoMo event with no fear of running out of subject matter (so far I’m 6 for 6!), but I think I should wait and see how the physical recovery goes before I overcommit and overextend myself on the writing side. Like I’m doing right now.

Stopping typing, starting sleeping now. Final verdict: would fly again, but would need another confluence of great reasons and low prices. Next time it might be nice to see if we can pay extra for seats in the no-hearing-damage section.