I helped the older Asian gentlemen put his backpack into the overhead luggage bin. I sat in the middle* and he had the window seat on our flight from London to San Francisco. It turns out he was an Oxford physics professor headed to Berkeley for a workshop. When I asked him about his travel, he told me he had visited the US too many times to count and he was always too busy to have time to sight-see. Later I praised Oxford as an exemplary institution of higher learning. He replied with a perfunctory "of course". After I told him I was a pastor, he kept calling me a priest and asked me about conducting mass. I couldn't tell if he was feigning ignorance or considered religion as beneath his superior intellect. I love talking to people on planes. I'm an extrovert and it's a captive audience. These situations are great opportunities to get to know people. Sometimes people aren't in the mood to talk and that's fine. They're also my favorite chances ...