So you run and you run

to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking / racing around to come up behind you again. 

Pink Floyd must have been singing about the inefficiencies of foot racing, because when you take off westward in the afternoon from Heathrow on a 777, you can give the sun a pretty solid run.  Sure, it gets an unfair head start because you’re only #17 for take off, and by the time you get up over the permanent cloud cover the sun is already forming large orange bands on the horizon, but you give chase for a good five hours.  The horizon gets slowly squeezed in the middle of your window until concentrated reds and purples pop out and run up and down the frame.  On top they separate and congeal into tiny white stars, on the bottom they blob into barely discernable landscapes.  You know that you're flying over nothing but ocean, so those must be clouds.  It can run, but it can't fool you. 

The sun finally shakes you somewhere behind the coast of Newfoundland, but on balance it probably worked harder than you in the race.  Have another drink.  On the ground, a sunset is finished in five minutes.  At 38,000 feet you can stretch it to feature length.  Unlike Saturday Night Live movies, the material emerges quite intact from extra scrutiny demanded by the expanded format. 

Of course, if you were on a Concorde, you could actually beat the sun by a whole hour and half.  It wouldn’t catch up with you until you were already on the ground, filling out your missing luggage report.  Who’s “shorter of breath” now?

[Note to investors: my in-seat power plug wasn’t working, hence the uncharacteristic lazing about.]