Actually, it is a sunny Tuesday morning in Shanghai as I write this post and i have finally found a way to get these posts online. It seems that I cannot even compose my new blogs via the normal means here, so I had to route through a remote computer froom back home. In any case, I should now be able to consistently post my entries. So, let's start with Saturday, January 9th, where I was at O'Hare airport checking in for my flight to Shanghai...
After a normal check-in at 8:45am, I proceeded to the AA Admiral's Club to awaiting boarding of my flight. On arrival there, I showed my ticket to the attendant so they would announce when my flight was boarding. Walking through the lounge over to my seat, I noticed some familiar colored boxes scattered about. They were, in fact, some good boardgames - Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, etc. Very nice, except this time I am traveling alone - oh well. I grabbed a tuna salad sandwich and a coke and relaxed. Soon it was 10:00am and time to board the plane. I found my window seat and settled in.
My biggest fear for the flight is that I had heard that due to security concerns, the had disabled the map display showing our current position, time to arrival, etc. I was relieved to find it still available. Soon we were airborne headed due north over the arctic circle. About an hour into the flight, we were over a snow-covered Lambeau Field, where I remembered that I would be unable to watch the upcoming playoff game vs. the Cardinals. At that point I took a mental note that the GPS display informed me we were a short 7000 miles (& 13.5 hours) from our destination - ugh.
After a serving of warm towels (not very tasty) the stewardesses took our lunch order. I would be having warmed nuts, a salad, Beef Fillet w/ foyot sauce, and some ice cream. Browsing through my video unit, I saw that all of the movies were bad, but they did have about 20 episodes of the Big Bang Theory that Lisa and I watch regularly.
After finishing my lunch, it was about 1:15pm CST and I tried to sleep. I got about 2 hours of good sleep, followed by another 3 hours of broken sleep. At 6:30pm CST, I gave up tried too sleep and was served a plate of Asian noodles with shrimp along with a bowl of fruit. At 7:00 I got up to stretch my legs for about a half hour I noticed we were now north of where there is sunlight in the winter and returned to my seat.
At 8pm CST (11am Sunday, Shanghai time) we were flying south over Siberia where the outside air temperature was -88F (yup, that's cold - even for 35,0000 feet). As we proceeded south, we again returned to daylight. Now we had 2500 miles to go (about 5 hours). When the clouds broke, I could see Siberia, and it looked exactly like you would expect in January. In fact, all the way down to Beijing, it looked like a ton of snow had fallen.
At 1:30pm China time (11:30pm CST), while over Beijing, we were served a light snack of deep-dish pizza and I had a Sprite. One hour and 45 minutes to goo!
Finally, at 3:15pm China time (1:15am CST), we landed in heavy fog and substantial rain in Shanghai where it was about 42 degrees.
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