The day the sun stood still

We had a 13 hr flight direct from Chicago to Beijing. The route doesn't make sense unless you get out a globe. We went straight north out of Chicago. Then we jogged a little east, I think to avoid big thunderstorms in northern Minnesota. We actually crossed quite a bit of Hudson Bay, then across central Canada and out into the Arctic Ocean. We went well to the north of Alaska (but still a long ways south of the north pole). Reached land again somewhere in Siberia, squeezed between North Korea and Mongolia and landed in Beijing. I think we went a little farther north than a straight line would have taken us, perhaps to catch more of a tail wind. [Can make a big difference-I remember on the Taiwan trip San Francisco to Tokyo was three hours longer than the exact same path back, because the prevailing west to east jet stream is a head wind on the way over and a tail wind on the way back].

I have a pretty good idea of the route because one of the video channels is a flight map/status channel. It cycles through screens showing where you are, the distance traveled so far, how much is left, your ground speed and outside temp. Can be a little surreal. The lights are dimmed and all the shades are drawn. Lots of people are using the blankets and trying to sleep, others are reading or watching movies or TV shows on the individual video monitors and headsets we all have. Looks like a huge slumber party in someone's living room. Then you check the map channel and see that you are way out over the arctic ice shelf at 32,000 ft, with a ground speed of 580 miles/hour and a 20 mile/hour tail wind and the outside temp is 65 degrees below zero. With not so such much as a small landing strip for 1000 miles, makes you wonder what 'Plan B' would be. Probably best not to wonder. Oh, and look--3,400 miles traveled so far and only 3,200 miles to go, yeah! Generally, the larger the plane, the less the turbulence and the flight was very, very smooth.

It was kind of funny the way we pretended to have a 'night'. After the first 2 hours and before the last 2 hours of the flight, the lights were dimmed and except for the occasional peak, were encouraged to keep our blinds down. We had a decent 'lunch' on both ends of the flight and sort of a 'midnight snack' in the middle. Even though I had a short night the night before, I never really did sleep. It was too early in the day (only late afternoon to early evening back home). We went west across 10 times zones and out of daylight saving time at some point so we lost a total of 11 hours. The flight lasted 13 hrs, so the 'local time' where we were only advanced a couple hours net. We boarded the plane at 12:30 in the afternoon and got off the plane at 2:30 in the afternoon. For the entire flight the sun was in an early afternoon position. So we lost 11 hrs, except we also crossed the international date so we gained 24 hr back in a hurry there. So we are 13 hrs ahead of Tahlequah. When it is noon there, it is 1AM the next day here. I haven't bothered to change my clocks, so all I have to do is ignore whether it says AM or PM and just add one hour. So right now the clock says 5:50 PM, so it must be 6:50 AM on Sunday!

Warm (~86 F) and muggy on our arrival. Customs and baggage were both very quick. Our co-worker and native 'Beijing-er' Jian met us at baggage along with a couple of guys from the Ministry of Water Resources. It took about an hour to get to the hotel. A very brown hazy sky, which is a combination of the humidity and smog.