Home again
On my way to China we had flown out of Boston to the east, up over Greenland, along the north coast of Europe and then down over Russia, through China to Hong Kong.
I had assumed we’d go back the same route.
But, we turned east out of Hong Kong, went up along Japan, over towards Alaska then across southern Canada to Boston.
So, this means I have now circled the globe going east all the way. Granted pretty far north where the distinction is limited, but I’ll take it.
This was something I’d always wanted to do, but never enough to make it happen. Those trips to Australia, China and other places on the opposite side of the world from home, I always said "maybe I should go back the other way", but it always cost a lot more and I’m cheap.
This was totally accidental as it was the same airline going between the same cities, they just used different routes. No idea why. It’s 16 hours in the air either way, so I’m sure they have their reasons. Probably wind patterns.
The middle seat wasn’t great, but it was still premium economy, so bigger than the one on the way over. I had known it was coming so didn’t drink much leading up to the trip and only had to ask folks to move out of my way a couple of times.
The guy to my right was fairly restless anyhow and got up to walk around a few times on his own. I tried to time my trips with that.
I don’t sleep well on planes and this was no exception. Of the 16 hours, mostly in the dark as they keep the shades down and lights off when no doing meals, I was awake watching movies, reading and such. I had entertained the idea of actually working on things, but I was too tired to get stuff done, even if not sleeping.
There was a whole family in the premium section with two kids single digit age, grandparents and a mother who sat on the opposite side of the plane from the kids.
A guy offered to change with her, and she said "no, my parents are watching them", asked for a glass of wine and fell asleep.
Their grandfather spent most of the flight standing over the kids seats talking to them. That’s a long flight to stand over kids.
They were fairly noisy playing video games for a lot of it. But, I have noise cancelling headphones.
We did get into Boston about 20 minutes early.
Like coming home from Europe last month I used the customs/immigrations app on my phone it was wonderful.
You preload it with all your information, take a photos of yourself and get your own line at the immigration both.
More than 200 people got off that plane, I got to go to a line with zero people ahead of me.
Someday everyone will use it and I’ll be back to in the middle of the crowd. But, right now, it is great.
Sadly at 10 at night they are working on the roads in Boston, so it took my wife a bit to come and get me. And, it was much colder than Suzhou. In China it had been above freezing the whole trip and a light windbreaker was enough for me.
It was well below zero in Boston and windy.
My wife did get me and took me home. The construction made what is normally a 40 minute drive more like 2 hours, but we got home just after midnight.
My last trip to China was in 2005. A lot has changed there since then, and a lot hasn’t.
Given my company, I’m pretty sure they’ll be sending me back next year too.
We’ll see how that goes.