Damica's Journal: Day 42 of 365 Somewhere over an arid place on the earth

📝 We are flying over arid land today. It is day 42 since we started with our homebuilt airship. You are wondering who we are and why we are doing that. Keep reading, and you will find the answer.

My name is Damica, and I’m fifteen. But that is not important. Currently, our home is Malaya, and she is a good craft around 80 meters long and 15 meters wide. It is filled to the brim with helium to give us lift.

Initially, I was unhappy about this adventure, as I needed to leave all my friends and toys behind. But now that we are underway, I love it! And it also means not school – ok, that is not entirely true as I’m being homeschooled for the year we will be on our voyage. But I can be outside and don’t need to sit in a stinking classroom all day.

My favorite spot on the ship is at the very bow. We have a small observation gondola installed there, just big enough for a single person. It’s the best spot to sit and read a book, especially during sunrise or evening. Unfortunately, it is everybody’s favorite place, ok. Ok, except for Luna, my little sister, who fears heights. So I can only sometimes sit in there. Next to my sister, there is my mother and my father on board. Oh, and before I forget, we also have our cat, Lucy, with us. She’s pretty old and sleeping most of the day – and I suspect she’s also afraid of heights. But we could not leave our family cat behind; that would have been cruel.

We all need to help with flying Malaya, as we never stop. And the bridge needs to be occupied 24 hours. Luckily I don’t need to do any night watches. My mother and father do that. I’m very proud that my parents trust me to fly the ship. And I’m also proud of myself that I can do it! I take over the helm in the morning for at least two hours so my father can rest. And then we eat breakfast. After breakfast, there is some time to learn something. I’m working on an assignment about the history of aviation which is quite interesting. I would instead learn something about horses or mythological animals. 

Then it was back to flying duty for me. Most of the time, I read a book while flying. That is ok, as we are only flying slowly and not so high that many other airplanes are in our way. And we have radar ;-) And it is not like driving a car – ok, not that I have any first-hand experience with car driving, but from how my parents explain it, it is quite different. You don’t need to be hyper-focused all the time. Everything happens slower. And there are no icebergs in the air :-D. 

Our mother will work on creating the vlogs videos, which we post regularly to our YouTube channel. I only like being on camera sometimes. It makes me self-conscious. But it helps pay for our adventure. But this is not an exciting topic at all. I instead write down my thoughts for you. The written word is much more powerful than any video can ever be!

I hope I can tell you more about our adventure, but I have written enough for today. And on most days, there is not so much happening. But if the winds hold up, we will reach our first major destination by the end of the week. And there we will do some sightseeing and some advertisement by showing around patrons of our project.

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