Travel Tale #1 - How high am I?

I've been told that I have an uncanny ability to make a long, drawn out story out of anything, so here's attempt number one for my Denver trip.

I flew Frontier, as noted below, and they have those little Direct TV TV consoles in the headrest of the seat in front of you. Of course, it's $5 to watch crappy TV shows and $8 to watch even crappier movies, but whatever. The bonus is that the have "flight TV," which lets you see how fast you are traveling, the altitude, and where you are flying over. Pretty cool... I enjoy that.

So we've been flying at ~40,000 feet the whole way, and we're making our descent and approach to Denver. I'm watching the altitude drop, and thinking "Wow, I can really see a lot of detail at 10,000 feet." We keep dropping, and I see the runway - really close now - and the monitor still says ~6000 feet. I think, "hmmm, maybe there's a pretty severe lag between reality and what's on the TV."

Finally, we're on the runway and going ~50 miles an hour, and the altitude shows 5300 feet. It's only then (so much for being smart) that the altitude is feet above sea level rather than feet above the terrain below. Duh.

Still, it's pretty wild to see how high above sea level I am, can't wait to see it on the way home.