Pilots...I study your styles/behaviors

I feel like when most people get on a plane, they either fall asleep immediately or start praying.
It's crazy.  How, when stepping foot onto one of the greatest man-made machines ever, could one enter a state of unconsciousness?  The question referring to both of my observations.
An airplane ride is something to be marveled.  I remember my first airplane ride.  I was something like five or six years old.  It was a Cessna, flying out of the Kent State University airport.  My dad wore a multi-colored stripe tank-top.  I believe my mom was in purple.  The pilot, a middle-aged man with a tan, dirty blonde hair and glasses, let me take the controls.  I saw my hometown in a way I've never seen it before.  The propellers whirring in my ears the whole time.
If you think I'm making this shit up...I'm not.  Being in a plane is that important to me.  Every memory I have of flying in a plane is so vivid.
Catching the connect from Atlanta to Miami International before boarding a cruise to the Bahamas..it was Ludacris on repeat, nodding my head as I watched the Southern sun pierce the cumulus clouds.
Snapping photos through Wayfarer lenses with a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in my lap and a quarter of fine herb in my wallet while sitting on the runway  for the flight to Vegas.
Playing Solitaire with a real deck of cars, holding my piss against the window seat, watching the Rocky Mountains pass underneath me while the boring married couple slept next to me on my first solo flight at age 12 to LAX.
Fuck, planes are a beautiful part of my life.  When I'm on em, I get the GIGGLES.
Pilots, this is where you come into play.  I pay attention to you.  When I get the chance, I talk to you.  You are fascinating people.
To look into the cockpit of a commercial airliner is mystifying.  And to think, those two people know what every one of those gadgets do, blipping and whirring, blinking and beeping.  Marvelous.
I wonder what the conversation is like with flight command..
"Looking good out there cap.  The plane looks solid.  Are you ready for air.  I've got a 747 on the C runway blasting in two minutes.  You're up next.  Safe travels.  Enjoy the view."
Or is it more serious than that?
The two pilots, locked in their cave up front, with 270 windshields and control of Rolls Royce supercharged twin turbine jet engines.  Only they know, through the privacy of headsets and the best secret keeper ever, Mr. Black Box.
While the plane stages, like a top fuel dragster perching itself at the tree, and the people around me adjust their wrap-around neck pillows and i-pod volumes, I fix my view out the window.  I feel the engines fire.  I can sense the pilot's hand on the throttle, controlling the vortex of energy.
I hear the conversation in the headset with flight control...I know when it's time.
There is no sound like those Rolls Royce engines firing hard, revving and sucking air so fast.
When the plane makes the turn from approach to the runway, a new level of power is achieved.
The captains hand, steady, dry, pushing on the throttle with authority, accelerating 100+ people to 300+ MPH in seconds.  With grace.
I laugh, I can't help myself.  Ever.  Watching the still world, concrete and grass, turn into a motion blur,  a camera trick, before my eyes--I can't control the laughter.  My forehead pressed hard against the quadruple thick, pressurized, air-tight, oval window.  Whirring.  Louder.  Rubber.  Getting Hotter.  Metal, shaking.  Wings, bouncing.  Then.  Weightlessness.
Floating.
Silence.
Liftoff.
I watch the flaps on the wings manipulate physics.  I imagine my arm braving highway speeds from the passenger side window in my Dad's Chevrolet Blazer at age 10:  Angle the palm upwards, the hand takes flight.  Angle it down, it is reflected in the side view.
I'm still giggling.  People are snoring around me.  A woman clutches a rosary.
Then you see the world like never before.
Detailed leaves turn into green swatches of color.  Single roads transform into a grid system, grey separating various shades of greens and tans, earth tones popping against man made.
The clouds are above.
Then they are eye level, making the planes wings shake.  Woman clutches her rosary harder.  My forehead leaves an oil mark on the Plexiglas.
Then the clouds are below.  The plane is at cruising altitude.  The clouds look like an ocean of cotton or endless snowcapped mountains born by the brush of the late Bob Ross.  It looks not real.
You can see the earth is actually round from this place, like a wide-angle, fish-eye lens, bending the world at the corners so the hot blue shifts to a violet hue.
You learn a lot about yourself up here.  You learn how to read, draw, write, think, talk to strangers.  And eventually perfect your drinking.
And, before long, all the sounds from takeoff reverse.  The whirring, winding-up of the engine becomes a reverse cymbal, the air being let from a balloon slowly.
The wing flaps push against the ground.  Earwax and snot readjusts to the shifting altitude.
The pilot speaks:  "We've begun our descent into (insert destination city).  We'll be on the ground shortly, as quickly and safely as possible."
This is where a pilot shines.  This is where a pilot earns my respect.  The descent.
It can't be too fast, something that will pop the blood vessels in your nose.
It can't be too slow, like the ground will never get there.
A good descent is like a long escalator ride, you let your weight lean hard on one foot.  You relax and watch the landing get closer.
If you listen closely at what looks like about 1,000 feet from the ground, you can hear the mechanical buzz of the landing gear growing from the undercarriage of the craft.  You can hear ground control:  "We see the landing, gear, Cap.  You're clear for touchdown."
Then, there is the moment that separates the pilots from the people who just fly planes.  The moment where the ground comes into focus and the plane,  with all its tons of steel and wires and people and their people shit, floats over the ground.
I've been slammed into runways.  Touchdown in Austria from Kosovo felt like someone dropped the plane from 5,000 feet and let projectile motion take over, a long jump skier with a death wish.
A good pilot will trick you, make you think the plane will smash the ground and send rubber particles and smoke from the runway.
Then, just before contact, the motion stalls.  The wings float up towards the sky one last time.  The ground becomes static.  Finally, you feel the soft squeal of the tires touching down..  The hundred+ people moving at hundreds of miles per hour just slow down.
"Welcome to (insert destination city here).