17 Hours and 6 Movies
How do pilots stand these long flights in the cramped quarters of a cockpit? It’s bad enough in the back of a 747 crammed into an Economy seat. At least we can get up to walk around the section – don’t dare step into First Class or Business, mind you. But for seventeen long hours, there you are stuck in a narrow seat staring at every movie released in the last six months that doesn’t have too much violence, sex, or references to plane crashes.Until you do it, you just can’t fathom how long it is to get across this planet to another side. Seventeen long hours in a plane. Wow! That just saps you dry. You leave one day, arrive a day later, and have a headache from the sleep depravation you’ve endured.
Sure, you try to get a few winks. In the Economy cabin that means sitting almost straight up in a narrow seat. Yea, it reclines a little, if you don’t mind the guy behind you banging his knees into the back of the seat. And why do the headrests jut out so far to crook your head downward? Soon ya find yourself falling over on the shoulder of your neighbor - hopefully someone with a soft shoulder who doesn’t mind.
The flight back on Monday was well over seventeen hours. It had only taken fourteen hours to go east with the wind. Returning to China puts you into the wind and slows down things considerably. We flew right up over those barren territories of Canada and over the Artic Circle before rolling back southward over Siberia and the bulk of China. Did you know the sea above Canada was known as the Beaufort Sea? How did we get a good Southern name up there?
I watched Batman Begins, Must Love Dogs, Bad News Bears (boy was that bad), some poor international thriller with a James Bond like character , and napped as much as I could through two other movies. Of course, wouldn’t ya know it: I had just seen Batman Begins. But it was good to finally see a good version of Must Love Dogs. I had purchased the DVD of it here, and found it to be one of those hand recorded pirated versions. I couldn’t figure out what all the extra chatter was at first, until a big shadow of a person sat down and blocked the hand held recorder and thus, the image was totally lost on the screen. All you can get here are pirated movies, and with that experience I learned to never buy the newest releases. Better to wait and hope it is a copy of a real video versus a hand recording.
And why are plane cabins so cold. Every few minutes my neighbors were reaching to try to turn down the little nozzles of cool air. It didn’t seem to make any difference to the cabin. It was cold. At least they provide blankets on these long flights.
I was fortunate to not have a mate in the next seat of the return. There were several couples on their way to adopt babies in the cabin. But unlike the flight to the States of a few weeks before, with 14 babies, this one had none. Sure made for a quieter flight.
At least it was warm when I got into Hong Kong. Nice to not need a jacket. A good nights’ sleep and I was feeling better. Still not quite sure what day and time it is yet though.
posted by A Bryson (formerly) in China @ 10:00 AM
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