Take that fireworks!
On a late evening flight from Germany to the UK last year I was sitting in a window seat just behind the wing. I always try to get a window seat because I don't know of any other opportunity to see the world from such an amazing viewpoint. If I don't have a window seat I spend quite a lot of the flight standing by the emergency exits at the back so I can look out of the window, which probably makes people worry that I'm some sort of lunatic who's planning to jettison the emergency door at 30,000 feet.

Somewhere over Germany the captain's voice comes over the PA "Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out the right hand side of the plane you'll see a rather nice fireworks display." Excellent, I thought, I've never seen fireworks from above, this should be ace! So I look out of the window into the darkness below and see... sod all. Well, there were the lights of a town and some villages, but not a firework to be seen. Arses, never mind, back to my book and looking out of the window occasionally.

About half an hour later I glance out of the window and notice two things: one, we're just passing over the Belgian/Dutch coast and two, there's a massive thunderstorm in progress. A few thousand feet below us and a few tens of miles off to the side an enormous thunderhead is hurling lightning around like a baby throwing its toys. Seeing thunderstorms from below is very cool, but from above they are properly awe inspiring. Lightning was flashing to the ground, but also constantly within the clouds and between layers of cloud, lighting them up like a huge Chinese lantern. I had a grandstand view of this because the air between the plane and the storm was completely clear. By the time we'd flown past it I'm pretty sure my face was significantly flatter than before from being pressed continuously against the glass.

Not a life-changingly emotional moment, but a genuinely beautiful reminder that nature can easily produce breathtaking sights that far outstrip any manmade effort.
(flimflam_machine, Fri 6 Aug 2010, 14:33, 2 replies)

I dunno, fireworks *are* pretty fucking cool:
When I was a child, my dad nailed a catherine wheel too hard- burnt the garden fence down.
*reminiscences*
( Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Fri 6 Aug 2010, 15:00, closed)

my dad did that, too
with less burning the fence down, though. it just kind of went SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEppppppffffttt, then went out.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 6 Aug 2010, 18:23, closed)