So much of what i think about a place depends on airplanes and weather. Many people will reply “how sad,” but i see that as a good thing as it means i don’t have to think about those people ever again. I love airplanes, i enjoy airplane noise. But flying, like photography, is something i truly love and therefore i would never subject it to being my livelihood.

So what does Boise offer in terms of airplanes and weather? Well as you can see from the above photo we do have some dramatic days as the seasons change. Yet once the summer begins the days will again become an endless parade of “non-weather.” See, many people think hot days with a flawless blue sky that occur one after another are a good thing. I can’t stand it. I’ve never liked summer, but i hate it here. Summer in the treasure valley of Idaho is a miserable slog of days that simply run together… one long boring movie that never seems to end.

As for airplanes Boise is one of the best areas i’ve ever lived. Again many (most?) people would say “what a waste of time,” but I’ve already addressed how i deal with that. My two favorite airplane facts of Boise: when you look up and see a Northwest airplane (easy to spot with their bright red rudder against the mostly featureless blue sky) you know two things – if it’s on approach it has come from Minneapolis, if it’s on departure it’s headed for Minneapolis. Think about that. How often can you look up and see a commercial airliner and know where it’s going or coming from? All i can think about is Casablanca and “the Lisbon plane.”

My second airplane fact is that every week night at between 7:00 and 7:08 a Fedex A-320 climbs out to the west and makes a long, languorous climbing turn right over my house. This doesn’t happen when the wind is out of the east, but that’s rare. The noise isn’t bad at all since it’s a modern A-320 with very quiet Pratt & Whitney high-bypass turbofans. The rate of climb is extraordinary which makes the ground speed seem like nothing. The craft just floats up into the sky as if it were weightless. I’ll miss watching that.