In flight. About 4 hours into an 11 hour flight. Ground speed 572mph, distance to destination: 3748 miles, altitude: 34003 ft , time to destination (being Seoul, Korea) 7:08 hours. All this courtesy of a very nice computer screen on the headrest of the person in front of me. It comes with a controller and movies and games and ... well, except for the fact that I've got my mac plugged into an outlet it's just about the best new thing I've seen on an airplane in a long long time.
Just got done watching the Motorcycle FIM World GP 2011 year in review, then a very nice short film called Life Cycle...mostly just a glorified mountain biking video...of downhillers and trick riders...but with a bit of a narrative, some good musical accompaniment, and a lot of very good footage. If you come across it, it's worth a watch. Next will be MI4 or Girl...blahblahblah...Tattoo.
I think I could fly Korean Air anywhere given the comfort of the seats, the leg room (well, there's two of us in a three seat row so that's helping an awful lot!), and a flight crew that's easier on the eyes than any other flight I've even been on. Yeah....once a guy, always a guy: sue me and get it over with!
Scenery out the window is very bland...clouds devoid of any motion or shape. If I open the window it's just blindingly bright. We did fly more or less due north out of SFO...I've heard tell that airlines fly up toward the north pole when traversing these kinds of distances because the distance is shorter...ol' wives tale?
On an interesting side note: today is Gram Johnson's 91st birthday...happy birthday, Gram! And the day I return? It's Dad's 66th birthday.
Well, we land at - OH....well well well...I found an interactive map on the headrest computer! Imagine that. We did indeed fly north to Seattle then roughly followed the Canadian/Alaskan coast. We are right now just leaving the Alaskan Coast and are just north of the Aleutian Islands. in perhaps an hour we will cross the IDL (International Date Line). SO: whether or not my reason for flying north is correct...we are indeedy flying north nonetheless. Local time at Seoul is 10:15 am...which means I should try and stay awake for the entire flight and it will be 4pm or so on landing...then I stay up for a few more hours and THEN I can hunker down on a seat somewhere in the airport for my nights' rest.
I smell food....I think they are handing out snacks...ahh a lttle hot bun with some sort of stuffing inside. Gotta go eat.
Okay, tried to make the 11.5 hour run in one sitting but fell short by an hour and a half. We are now 40 minutes from landing and I know my limit for sitting in a seat is just about 11 hours. I'm starting to wiggle around and be uncomfortable.
Our landing was...fun...I didn't know there was a slalam course out there on the runway or I'd have packed the RF900! I'm down on the ground in Seoul at this time. In 14 hours I'll be headed for Minila. Yeah...that's 1-4.
