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Wow. Long trip. Long flight. Glad to be home. Jet lagged.
My kitties are very attentive right now. :-)
There were lots of interesting things about the flight home. We changed Swedish money to US at the Stockholm airport. Our flight departed well before dawn. Sunrise was quietly gorgeous over the Baltic Sea.
We had three hours in Schiphol, so we went out through passport control and found the rather understated little sign pointing us to the terrace. That's one of the coolest things about Schiphol since they took the flower vending machines out: you can walk around on the roof of the whole concourse. There's even some kind of flight simulator ride, up there on the roof (three euros a pop), but we discovered to our dismay that it's only open on weekends. I went inside and got myself a wide thin Dutch pancake with apple slices baked into it. Mmmm.
We got a 747 for the flight to San Francisco. It's easily been twenty years since I boarded a 747. There is a jetway for each floor. Cool.
When they're not showing the in-flight movie, or cartoons, or instructions about filling out the forms for entry into the US, the passenger cabin monitors often show statistics about the trip. One screen shows the GPS track of the route, with the plane's current position; sometimes this zooms in a bit. Another shows total flight time, flight time remaining, local time at the aircraft's present position, and expected arrival time in the arrival time zone. Another shows altitude, ground speed, outside temperature, and some fourth statistic.
I was fascinated by the GPS track. We flew a great circle route, and that far north, its arc was widely exaggerated on the projection map. Our route crossed the Arctic Circle. We were lucky enough to have clear skies (or should I say clear ground?) for big chunks of the flight, so we could see some of the wild, wild terrain underneath us. Greenland, Baffen Island, the north edge of Hudson Bay, and more westerly parts of northern Canada are vast snowy frozen untamed wildernesses when seen from 37,000 feet. I instantly wanted to go wandering around in that big quiet land.
I was also fascinated by the local time. For a surprisingly large chunk of the flight it was between noon and one PM. I seemed to look at the monitor every time it displayed half past noon. As we got to the northernmost portion of our route, the local time got to be ten past eleven or so. We were beating the clock not only because that was when we were heading closest to due west but also because time zones are so skinny up there. Then we arced south again, eventually far enough that the time zones were too wide for the aircraft to cross one every hour, and we began losing time. We landed only slightly behind in the race: 1:30PM.
I was also fascinated by the ice on the wings, but that's just because I don't get to see that very much.
When we arrived at San Francisco, we saw some biggish boxes sitting on the tarmac. They were clearly designed to be put onto aircraft. They bore the KLM logo and the words "horse container". We asked. The label is not misleading; they are indeed meant to carry live horses. We didn't happen to have any horses on this flight, continued the flight attendant, but usually there is at least one, in the aft cargo compartment behind the passenger cabin. (Perhaps that's the only place tall enough?) After seeing that I admit I felt a little silly just because I had never before wondered how, or whether, horses were transported across oceans these days.
Now I have been awake for twenty-three hours, and I will go unpack, get myself some food, and sleeeeeeeeep.
P.S. Roads here are huge. In fact, everything here is just plain big. But the roads, wow.
My kitties are very attentive right now. :-)
There were lots of interesting things about the flight home. We changed Swedish money to US at the Stockholm airport. Our flight departed well before dawn. Sunrise was quietly gorgeous over the Baltic Sea.
We had three hours in Schiphol, so we went out through passport control and found the rather understated little sign pointing us to the terrace. That's one of the coolest things about Schiphol since they took the flower vending machines out: you can walk around on the roof of the whole concourse. There's even some kind of flight simulator ride, up there on the roof (three euros a pop), but we discovered to our dismay that it's only open on weekends. I went inside and got myself a wide thin Dutch pancake with apple slices baked into it. Mmmm.
We got a 747 for the flight to San Francisco. It's easily been twenty years since I boarded a 747. There is a jetway for each floor. Cool.
When they're not showing the in-flight movie, or cartoons, or instructions about filling out the forms for entry into the US, the passenger cabin monitors often show statistics about the trip. One screen shows the GPS track of the route, with the plane's current position; sometimes this zooms in a bit. Another shows total flight time, flight time remaining, local time at the aircraft's present position, and expected arrival time in the arrival time zone. Another shows altitude, ground speed, outside temperature, and some fourth statistic.
I was fascinated by the GPS track. We flew a great circle route, and that far north, its arc was widely exaggerated on the projection map. Our route crossed the Arctic Circle. We were lucky enough to have clear skies (or should I say clear ground?) for big chunks of the flight, so we could see some of the wild, wild terrain underneath us. Greenland, Baffen Island, the north edge of Hudson Bay, and more westerly parts of northern Canada are vast snowy frozen untamed wildernesses when seen from 37,000 feet. I instantly wanted to go wandering around in that big quiet land.
I was also fascinated by the local time. For a surprisingly large chunk of the flight it was between noon and one PM. I seemed to look at the monitor every time it displayed half past noon. As we got to the northernmost portion of our route, the local time got to be ten past eleven or so. We were beating the clock not only because that was when we were heading closest to due west but also because time zones are so skinny up there. Then we arced south again, eventually far enough that the time zones were too wide for the aircraft to cross one every hour, and we began losing time. We landed only slightly behind in the race: 1:30PM.
I was also fascinated by the ice on the wings, but that's just because I don't get to see that very much.
When we arrived at San Francisco, we saw some biggish boxes sitting on the tarmac. They were clearly designed to be put onto aircraft. They bore the KLM logo and the words "horse container". We asked. The label is not misleading; they are indeed meant to carry live horses. We didn't happen to have any horses on this flight, continued the flight attendant, but usually there is at least one, in the aft cargo compartment behind the passenger cabin. (Perhaps that's the only place tall enough?) After seeing that I admit I felt a little silly just because I had never before wondered how, or whether, horses were transported across oceans these days.
Now I have been awake for twenty-three hours, and I will go unpack, get myself some food, and sleeeeeeeeep.
P.S. Roads here are huge. In fact, everything here is just plain big. But the roads, wow.
vast snowy frozen untamed wilderness
welcome home! sounds like a really neat flight. schiphol is still my favourite large airport -- that is so cool that they took those machines out! it's been a while since i've been back.
and now i sit back and wait for you to recover and then tell all sorts of cool stories about norway. :)
Re: vast snowy frozen untamed wilderness
I will try to remember some cool stories to tell. I wrote a trip-journal on Rob's laptop; perhaps he'll send me a copy in the next day or two. :-)
roads
Oh, yes! 1.2-2x as wide as the roads I remember from the UK and Ireland when I visited there in 2000. I remember being very relieved [1] to be back on US roads where there was more space between the cars in each lane... and space along the edge of the road to park.
I remember remarking repeatedly on the way home (to the friends who had picked me up from SFO) how different, how much larger, the roads were here than in the UK & Ireland.
-- Shadopanther
[1] Relieved not to be getting white knuckles or jumpy any more as my mother drove the UK & Irish roads... coming within inches or less of rock walls or parked cars on the passenger side in order to feel not so close to oncoming traffic on the driver's side on those little roads.
Re: roads
My house is freekin huge, too. Embarrassing.
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I've wished that planes had a map telling where you are - like you had with the GPS - I guess they won't do that on a NY-Florida trip :(
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Yes, I wish more planes had a display like that one. Mostly they show movies and other things in which I am completely 100% uninterested. But flight data and position tracking is cool. :-)
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Doing the Happy Snoopy Dance,
-Wen
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