This blog is primarily about the simulation hobby. However, from time to time I am tempted to post some of my travel experiences. Here is one to that list…
Long-haul travel can make one weary, it also provides for very unique experiences.
My most recent trip took me to the Eastern Hemisphere. On the way back to the Midwest, travel routing called for a flight over the Orient.
Leaving Singapore in the wee hours of the morning, it was a treat to watch the sun come up on the horizon as the 747 dash 400 rolled down runway 02 Center. The Pratt and Whitney engines are a marvel in themselves. They make lifting 875,000 pounds look easy. The dash 400 is another story – when the ‘Queen of the Skies’ rotates for takeoff it makes one wonder if the airplane is flying fast enough to even take flight.
Making a straight-out departure north-east, we left the Straits behind. Flying over the South China sea, we flew past Kuala Lumpur and then Ho Chi Minh city to arrive in Hong Kong 4 hours 20 mins later. Change of planes.
Less than hour later, we were rolling down Hong Kong’s Runway 28R for the long flight to Chicago. 7779 miles/~13000 kilometers – planned flight time 14 hours.
The flight plan would take us past Shanghai, China and then over the North Pacific past Osaka and Tokyo, Japan. Past that it was blue ocean beneath all the way to the 63rd parallel. Turning east here we made landfall on the Alaskan shoreline, past Juneau into Northwest Canada. With Saskatchewan past us, it was direct Edmonton, over North Dakota and Minnesota we flew into Chicago.
We had been about 8 hours into our departure from Singapore at sunrise and it was beginning to get dark. The light had begun to fade. What a strange feeling.
The longitudes had been incrementing all this time. We had gone past the 170 East longitude and soon crossed the international date line. The longitudes will now begin to decrement, The time zone clock had been advancing all along. We were UTC+12. Now in a flash, we were UTC-12!
In about 5 hours from that point the sky began to turn to early morning blue. Soon the orange glow appeared and within minutes a bright sun filled the sky.
Within 10 hours of seeing the sun come up, I had seen it turn dark outside and then witnessed the sunrise again! Speaking of modern air travel shrinking the world, it even shrinks solar cycles.
These experiences make one realize the vastness of the planet we live in and laws of nature that rule.
It is humbling in many ways and makes us understand what an infinitesimal part of this ecosystem we really are….
CPJ
