5:15 Pacific time. I’m not really sure what time zone we are in, so California was the last time I set my watch.
OK, as I write this, I am currently about halfway though the last and longest leg of the trip. The connections in Washington DC and San Francisco went smoothly and without incident. One surprise we had not expected was the need to go through security in San Francisco in addition to having done it first thing this morning.
The flights and landings have been especially smooth and easy; I remember flying as being a bumpy white-knuckle affair, but it has been several yeas since I’ve flown, certainly not since 9/11. I have to say the security screenings were a joke. They never even looked at my checked luggage, and it was up to me to unpack my carry on bag-they never bothered to see if I actually unpacked everything. I could have had anything in my backpack.
Airport food is ridiculously expensive, with really crappy salami sandwiches selling for a mind-boggling $7,95. I guess what is really mind boggling is that I bought one anyway and so did Marc. Still, the weather was good and there were no delays, so all the connections happened as planned, which was my biggest worry.
Maybe I was just half-starved after the long day, but the lunch they just served on this flight was really good. Some kind of chicken stir-fry with rice, a roll and butter, salad, and some kind of little cake, Afterwards they served green tea, which was not something I imagine happens on most American flights,
Each seat has a built-in monitor that shows your choice of movies, TV shows, music or a map of the trip. In my earlier flight the controls didn’t work, so I ended up watching Spider-man 3 twice. It was hard to sit through even the first time. There was wayyy too much drama with too little action.
But the screen and controls work on this flight, and as I look at it right now, the map functions tells me that we are approaching the International Date Line. The map is one of those horribly distorted Mercator (?) projection maps, so scale and distance are hard to judge. Every once in a while it will tell me that we have traveled 5 hours and 40 minutes, that our projected arrival is 3:50, our altitude is 36,000 feet, and our ground speed is aroun 560 mph (wow!).
It’s incredibly boring, I guess they want people to sleep, so the windows are mostly shut and the lights are out. We’re over the ocean so there isn’t much to see anyway. The map tells me now that the temperature outside is -58 degrees Celsius. That’s pretty darn cold, yet the windows feel warm from the sunlight.
They just pushed a drink cart up to the front of the section, so it looks like it’s complimentary drink time again. I had a headache earlier, and it went away right after I had airplane coffee. My schedule is so screwed up, I think I’m having morning coffee withdrawals already, and I haven’t even seen a real morning yet! OK, they’re done now: Diet Coke, Ruffles potato chips, an almond cookie, and a little mini-Twix bar. Good haul!
The Japanese lady sitting next to me has spent the entire flight either sleeping or reading books of sheet music. I guess you can do that if you are musically inclined (I’m not). She had not spoken to me until she saw the Palm Pilot I am writing this on. The folding keyboard fascinated her, and I had to demonstrate the whole thing (Yes, I brought the computer, but the Palm is much smaller and the battery lasts far longer, so it seemed like the better choice for airplane writing), She asked me what I do, and I told her I was an English teacher and writer. That sounded pretty good in my opinion. Since then she has been offering me candy, Good grief!
Bottom line: all is going well. I’m just writing this to keep myself from being bored to death. I just set my watch to Japan time; 10:28am. This is the third time since I woke up that I’ve seen 10:28 am. It’s getting a little monotonous. If I keep traveling west long enough will I travel forward in time? It’s starting to look like it actually DOES work like that :0. So from here on out, I’ll be talking in Japan time. Just a bit of trivia: Japan is big enough to cover two time zones, but they cheat for simplicity and only use one. While it gets dark in the eastern half at 8pm, it doesn’t get dark in the west until an hour later.
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