Greetings from 32,428 ft over beautiful North Washagami.
Where?
According to our handy dandy Microsoft GPS mouse hook-up, that'd be about 100 clicks south of Hudson's Bay.
No, not the store in Fairview. The real one.
Closet (or perhaps not so) geek that I am, I just had to see if Streets and Trips would work with the sensor glued to the airplane's window; lo and behold it does. Spectacularly well I might add. Ray and I amuse ourselves comparing our speed, altitude and position data to the generic readouts the peasants are being fed on the in-flight screens. Ours are better. We just know. Plus we can zoom in and garner extraordinarily important facts; such that we are now directly overhead… uh… beautiful North Washagami. That might even matter, if we could see what the hell beautiful North Washagami actually looked like. But it's covered by 10/10ths cloud. No doubt like the rest of the upper Northern hemisphere we will fly through for the next half a day.
Still, at two hours into our 14 hour and 45 minute flight, we are feeling reasonably content. The food cart has just past with a pretty decent lunch, the wine is on the house, and the Airbus A340-500's seats are proving to be better than the standard short-hauler school bus fare. It hadn't looked promising from the outset though.
Apart from a stalled van blocking up the 20 on my 6 a.m. cab ride out, our quick jaunt to T.O. went flawlessly. A nice start. It didn't stay that way for long.
Where?
According to our handy dandy Microsoft GPS mouse hook-up, that'd be about 100 clicks south of Hudson's Bay.
No, not the store in Fairview. The real one.
Closet (or perhaps not so) geek that I am, I just had to see if Streets and Trips would work with the sensor glued to the airplane's window; lo and behold it does. Spectacularly well I might add. Ray and I amuse ourselves comparing our speed, altitude and position data to the generic readouts the peasants are being fed on the in-flight screens. Ours are better. We just know. Plus we can zoom in and garner extraordinarily important facts; such that we are now directly overhead… uh… beautiful North Washagami. That might even matter, if we could see what the hell beautiful North Washagami actually looked like. But it's covered by 10/10ths cloud. No doubt like the rest of the upper Northern hemisphere we will fly through for the next half a day.
Still, at two hours into our 14 hour and 45 minute flight, we are feeling reasonably content. The food cart has just past with a pretty decent lunch, the wine is on the house, and the Airbus A340-500's seats are proving to be better than the standard short-hauler school bus fare. It hadn't looked promising from the outset though.
Apart from a stalled van blocking up the 20 on my 6 a.m. cab ride out, our quick jaunt to T.O. went flawlessly. A nice start. It didn't stay that way for long.
We were asked to board the Shanghai flight no less than 45 minutes before the 10:30 departure. Then sat on the ground until 11:30 before the plane finally moved. Oh, and the APU (little backup jet engine that runs stuff when you're on the ground) was busted, so the temperature inside soon soared to tropical jungle levels. Acclimatization training? Maybe they do this to all the Canadians on the way out, see if they can hack it in the steaming metropolises that lie beyond the next baggage claim. But no, turns out some goof thought he could get onboard without a visa. They only caught this at the gate, so they had to spend an hour unloading all the baggage containers to get his suitcase out, then reload them. We know it was the farthest one. Because we sat there in the sauna for an hour counting every f@%$*^ last clunk as they went in and out of the cargo hatch below us. The last thing you want on a fifteen hour flight, without question, is to make it seventeen hours.
Despite this, everybody stayed very civilized, and I was frankly amazed at how well the many youngsters on board fared, all cute and extremely well behaved little Chinese kids. Except the one that every passenger and crew member wanted to kill. Also the reason Ray and I got but 2hrs sleep at best. Boarding the plane was the first inkling I got that I will be very much a strange person in a wholly different land. Of course I was well aware of the fact that this trip represented the greatest cultural departure I've yet experienced, but the reality of it has now begun to sink in. This is for real. Cool.
What exactly awaits us on the far side of the Pacific? Give me 12 more hours and I'll tell you. For now I'll content myself with staring at the GPS readout and now imagining what the middle of Hudson's bay would look like down there, if only I could see the damn thing… What? 532 mph ground speed???? Hey buddy, drop the cup of Timmy's and put the spurs to 'er, eh? Book says she'll do 550! Eh? I don't give a damn it's the headwind. In J.F.K.'s words, I want to get there before this decade is out.
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Despite this, everybody stayed very civilized, and I was frankly amazed at how well the many youngsters on board fared, all cute and extremely well behaved little Chinese kids. Except the one that every passenger and crew member wanted to kill. Also the reason Ray and I got but 2hrs sleep at best. Boarding the plane was the first inkling I got that I will be very much a strange person in a wholly different land. Of course I was well aware of the fact that this trip represented the greatest cultural departure I've yet experienced, but the reality of it has now begun to sink in. This is for real. Cool.
What exactly awaits us on the far side of the Pacific? Give me 12 more hours and I'll tell you. For now I'll content myself with staring at the GPS readout and now imagining what the middle of Hudson's bay would look like down there, if only I could see the damn thing… What? 532 mph ground speed???? Hey buddy, drop the cup of Timmy's and put the spurs to 'er, eh? Book says she'll do 550! Eh? I don't give a damn it's the headwind. In J.F.K.'s words, I want to get there before this decade is out.
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