Chapter 1: Section 6: Page 52: Line 131 (925)

 In the short time he'd been riding with them, he'd almost come to feel more at home up in the Inconvenience than he did at the Agency.

* * * * * * * * * *

Well of course Lew did! The Chums are right good fellows who must be a lot of fun to pal around with (excepting Lindsay, of course). And who is there to joke around with back at the Agency?! Nate? Rewind? The dozens of nameless coworkers Lew named who would have been better suited for the Denver transfer? The ones who, daily, tried to convince Lew that Anarchists were around every corner blowing things up and destroying America? Why would Lew ever feel at home at the Agency? Why would Lew ever feel at home anywhere since he obviously isn't even in his proper timeline! I say "obviously" because it seems obvious to me but I guess it's just theory and speculation. But what do you expect from somebody whose formative years were spent watching In Search Of which begins with "This series presents information based in part in theory and conjecture." I was five years old when I began watching that show! My whole world became based in theory and conjecture!

"come to feel more at home up in the Inconvenience"
Lew has begun the transformation into a ballooner, more comfortable in the heavens than on the Earth. Already on the Earth, he had begun to see things in ways he couldn't unsee: weird hidden districts, labyrinthine hotels, union workers as human beings, chaotic and violent rulers. He was learning inconvenient truths which were edging him out of the comfort of the status quo. The Agency was where one believes what those in power want you to believe, grounded and sure; the Inconvenience is where one can see the true scope of things, throwing a wrench in the comfort of life trying not to care too much about anything but themselves. As Pynchon so starkly stated in Gravity's Rainbow, the "inconvenience of caring" was a thing so abhorred by so many that they would contort their world view and beliefs into pretzels of logic to continue to ignore it.

Chapter 1: Section 2: Page 20: Lines 171-174 (276-279)

 "Nowadays," Penny said, "they'll fly wherever they're needed, far above fortress walls and national boundaries, running blockades, feeding the hungry, sheltering the sick and persecuted . . . so of course they make enemies everyplace they go, they get fired at from the ground, all the time. But this was different. We happened to be up with them that one day, and it was just the queerest thing. Nobody saw any projectiles, but there was . . . a kind of force . . . energy we could feel, directed personally at us. . . ."

* * * * * * * * * *

"they'll fly wherever they're needed"
The "they" here are the Garçons de '71. Remember them?! Penny mentioned them earlier when she began this story of the Bindlestiffs over Mount Etna last spring. Apparently the Aeronautic Clubs aren't direct descendants of the Garçons de '71 like I thought. The Garçons de '71 are still out there floating their balloons twenty years after the Siege of Paris, going where they need to go to help out all the besieged people of Earth.

"they make enemies everyplace they go"
Of course they do! Nothing like helping out the oppressed by interfering with a nation's subjugation of people they've "othered" through national campaigns of propaganda to invoke that nation's wrath!

"Nobody saw any projectiles, but there was . . . a kind of force . . .energy we could feel, directed personally at us. . . ."
Whoa! This is the kind of thing Leonard Nimoy's "Mr. Spock" would have stood at attention for! On tonight's episode of In Search Of . . . "Invisible Forces." This is the kind of stuff that would have gotten its own edition in the Time/Life series Mysteries of the Unknown. This is the stuff I would have read about and believed in like a good little Fox Mulder wannabe in elementary school (before Fox Mulder existed so, really, he's just a pale imitation of me).
    This invisible force didn't harm anybody though so why might it have been directed at them? Penny sets it up as if it were an attack, seeing as how the Garçons de '71 have made so many enemies. But nobody gets hurt so it must have been a . . . probe! The aliens were out there probing these kids!

Well, Penny, that's one hell of a sky-story! I think you win this round of frightening tales around the campfire!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 9: Line 103

 "These are mysteries of the profession," Chick supposed.

* * * * * * * * * *

Oh, so world traveling boy adventurer is a profession, is it? Why didn't anybody tell me this when I was eight? I hate adults.

Maybe it wasn't the adults' fault. Maybe it was my lack of vision and ambition. It's not like I didn't grow up watching In Search of . . . my entire young life. There were mysteries out there to discover and what was I doing about them at eight years old? Absolutely nothing, that's what! I could have gone out and built an airship like those puppets in Outerscope on that psychedelic kid's show Vegetable Soup. I could have hopped on my bike and patrolled my neighborhood for paranormal goings on! I could have experimented with talking to plants to see if they understood what I was saying. But did I do any of that? No! I was too busy sitting in my fake wood paneled family room on a paisley bean bag recording myself reading stories from Choose Your Own Adventure books so that I could fall asleep listening to myself tell me stories later! What a dumb prick I was!