<p>I am heading for Amsterdam for the millennial holiday season, using $600 in United Airlines credits that were the bumping compensation for my 1998 Europe trip.
</p><p>I have just taken off from San Francisco. I am climbing above Lake Merritt and Oakland, with the Bay Bridge and San Francisco further away. I will soon hit the Winter Wonderland of Lake Tahoe, Pyramid Lake, and the Rockies, before flying into darkness over the Canadian tundra and the Northern Lights over the North Atlantic. Flight 930 was my first and only look at the Northern Lights.
</p><p>United Airlines also pampered me with an inflight audio channel playing exclusively music from my favorite lesbian rock goddess, Melissa Etheridge. A very Sapphic touch for the millennial holiday season, and very appreciated as the rest of the trip, including Amsterdam, was far from Sapphic.
</p><p>Flight 930 landed at London Heathrow, where I would transfer to another United flight for the final leg to Amsterdam, but due to high winds at Schiphol, the connection was cancelled, and I was transferred to Air France to wait the winds out at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. I arrived in Amsterdam 6 hours late, and door-to-door time from my Concord apartment to my Amsterdam hotel was 26 hours (some of it also attributable to a BART fire as I left home).
</p><p>"Fly the Lesbian-Friendly Skies"
</p>
N205UA, Boeing 777-200ER (XI)
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/people/56619626@N05">skinnylawyer</a> from Los Angeles, California, USA
CC BY-SA 2.0
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/skinnylawyer/5296747013/">San Francisco Bay from United 930: Fly the Lesbian-Friendly Skies</a>