Archive for the ‘Travel’ tag
Wir Sind Angekommen
Today is the day. Our adventure starts now! I spent most of the day Saturday getting things laid out and packed. And this morning I met Bess and Moe for breakfast before departing.
I couldn’t help but feel like, when we left, that I’d forgotten something. My bags weighed in at just 33 pounds total - far less than Brian’s 51 lbs.! I guess this round, I get to harass him about luggage.
The three of us, Ted, Brian and I, made our way to the airport at about 2:00 PM EDT. We would have left sooner, and probably should have, but no less, we made it in time.
Brian insisted on getting his boots polished once we reached the airport. Whatever.
After going through security and such, we headed for the duty free shops, where I picked up a bottle of The Glenlivet. I figured that would be a fine thing to share on a cold night in Zurich!
And then, at pecisely 4:45, as scheduled, we took off. I had hoped to get a good sunset view, but I was surprised how quickly the sun vanished after take off! By the time we reached 10,000 ft. there was almost nothing to look at, and the haze was rather thick, which is unusual for a cold day like today.
I brought along a little gadget of mine - a GPS receiver for my BlackBerry. I set it at take off to track our flight, but unfortunately, it lost sync with the satellites shortly after lift-off. So I missed the first 20 minutes or so of our flight, but it has resumed operation now, and we’re cruising at 32,780 ft. Since I’m logging this on my phone, I should have a KML file to plot in Google Earth, which will be neat.
With the sun completely gone now, and the landscape dark, the cities we’re flying over are beginning to light up, and from here, it’s easy to see two or three towns at a time! Sadly, my window isn’t very clear, so no pictures.
Also, if you’re wondering, I ate all of the peanuts at once. It was a big bag.
NOTE: I wrote this entry in my notebook, and uploaded it later, once we reached Switzerland.