Oh, it is sooo nice to be home. Yesterday was the longest travel day of my life .. I think 31 hours door to door. I left my hotel in Singapore at 10 AM grabbed a bus to Changi Airport and boarded Singapore Air’s direct non-stop flight to Newark. It aw just over 18 hours long.. about the same distance as the Newark Singapore direct flight I took over last Sunday. It was definitely the longest in-air flight I’ve ever taken.. A little internet research verified that SQ21, my flight yesterday is the
longest non-stop commercial flight In the history of the world. believe me it feels like it ! One surprise is that the Newark-Singapore route went east.. and so did the Singapore-Newark flight. So I did my 3rd complete around the world trip in a year. The route there went northeast just south of the pole then down over England, Iraq, Afghanistan. Pakistan, Singapore.. The route back went up over japan, Siberia, crossed over to Alaska, Toronto and then down into NYC.
I hadn’t expected to cross the pacific.. but crossing the dateline gave me back a calender day.. According to the calender, I got back to the states about 4 hours after I left.. That missing day goes in the bank somehow.
We flew over the Bering straights where all of North and South America’s indigenous people walked over from Asia.. That’s pretty cool
I didn’t sleep much on the flight, I meditated, thought about my akl kids, (Sam.. I felt you there) worked on my laptop, read some (Brian Green’s excellent Fabric of the Cosmos.. about the nature of
spacetime.. a GREAT read) .. I also played around with a cup of water and watched the vibrational resonance of the big airplane.. The devil finds work for the idle mind 🙂
I finally decided to watch a movie. I chose Juno.. a story about a 16 yer old kid who gets pregnant. . The lead actress was wonderful.. and I really liked the way her parents were portrayed. the movie avoided being judgmental or preachy about teenage pregnancy, abortion, adoption. etc.. It was funny and very cool..the music was great. I really liked the movie.
What as cool is that the Juno movie ended just as we were flying over Juneau
It was funny how the time passed. After we hit Alaska.. the last 6 hours of the flight went by so quickly. I was really happy to see us about to land.. the time had passed peacefully and quickly..
The flight from Singapore turned out to be the easiest part of the trip.. I got into Newark and cleared customs and integration in less than 15 minutes.. then I had to get to JFK to catch a Jetblue flight home. I’ll spare you the details.. but they included a 2 and a half hour overpacked, overheated,van ride with a sadistic freak-o driver…Here’s a view from the back of the van…
Then a 3 hour delay on my flight to burlington…
had a slow and quiet dinner in the packed terminal.. I enjoy eating when I travel more now than I ever have..
Then I found a nice place to sit and started working.. I had to keep from getting too comfortable so I wouldn’t fall asleep and miss my flight.
Around 11 I was happy to run into my friend David (on the right) He and I have worked on some education outreach programs together. I sat with him as he ate dinner and we had a great conversation about the use of video games in education, physics, families and a bunch of other stuff. It was great catching up with him.
An additional bonus is that David lives in Stowe.. so he was able to give me a ride home from the airport.. It was exactly 4AM when we drove up to the house.. I was so tired.. I crawled into bed and slept until noon !
Today was pretty uneventful.. I feel pretty non-jetlagged.. I think it might hit me more tomorrow. Around 2 I took Gabe and some friends into Williston to see a mvie. I took advantage of the trip to try out my new super power TV-B-Gone.. First I went into BestBuy.. I picked up a basket as part of my shopper disguise..
It worked pretty well.. Now they’re on…
Now they’re off
Here too
Here was the acid test.. one of those great big wall of TV’s.. It works great !
I tried it at Mexicali (with their permission)
I picked Gabe and his friends up at the move.. Gabe came home and noticed that the rain had caused a huge pond in our back yard. I got the idea to get out his skim board. It was very cool to watch.. and VERY cold to fall in !
Just before 6 the freezng rain finally got the best of the power lines.. the lights flickered out a few times.. then boom. Darkness all over town. It was cool and erie. We dug for candles and flashlights.
Around 6, Tim, Jen and Nate picked us up to go see Julie’s dance show GREAZZY at Higher Ground. It was a hip-hop rendition of the movie Grease.. It was so well done.. It was amazing how these girls kept moving and kept in sync so well during the hour and a half show. It was really cool.
We got home around 10 to find the power back on. Gage and Trevor had made aluminum foil helmuts to protect them from the Zombies that might have shown up while the power was out.. Good idea !..
Speaking of good ideas.. sleep sounds like a good idea to me now.. so more tomorrow. G’nite all.. G’nite Sam.
