December 30, 1999: The phone call from the office caught me just as snowflakes started to fall, lending the conversation an unreal dimension from the very beginning. The assignment editor spoke with admirable simplicity: "The millennium ends at midnight tomorrow," she reminded me, "and world aviation will shut down for a few hours for fear of the Y2K computer bug. We thought it would be really cool for you to get a plane that would nevertheless be in the air at precisely midnight on December 31. There will be two of these in the entire world; then you could report on how it felt to be airborne at this critical moment."