Day Thirty Eight - Flight from Dubai over the North Pole to Seattle.......The End
Miles to destination - 6800
Flying at approximately - 560 mphFlight time - 12.5 hours
Flying in a plane is amazing, isn't it? Take thousands of
pounds of people and luggage and the food and beverage to feed those people and
stick them in a silver tube with some wings sticking out the side and brilliant
aero-dynamic engineering and voila!
You're up in the air and time traveling.
Get a window seat and keep checking outside and you see the
most amazing sights from a perspective you can't get any other way.
We're flying over Russia....the barren, endless deserts and
mountain ranges that are impassable. But
no, wait, there are roads or, at least, what appear to be roads, that go on and
on for miles and miles and miles. Who,
in their right mind, would want to cross that "nothingness"? Where nothing can survive. Where there is no life of any kind, no
beauty, and no friendliness. Just
lifelessness and the end of life if you try to pass without all of the right
tools, equipment, supplies and necessary transportation to fight nature to make
it through!
We spent a month traveling simply two-thirds the periphery
of only one country in Africa (with a few "pop-ins" to other
countries) on a 5200 km. journey and you read the various types of geography,
vegetation, life and animals I wrote about.
And now, passing over thousands of miles of lifeless desert in a matter
of hours, is so dramatically different.
I'm in the back of the plane (I like it because it's cooler
and I mean temperature). I think its
noisier back here but that's okay.
All of a sudden, I hear the engines get very loud and
realize the pilot must be taking the
plane to a higher elevation. I switch
from my movie to the "flight view" and see that, sure enough, we're
going from 28,000 feet to 33,000 feet.
I'm watching the numbers go up and am fascinated when the pilot hits
33,007 then back down to 32, 999, then back up to 33,004, then settles on
exactly 33,000 and only goes between 32,999 and 33,001. That's good piloting!
The next phase is going over the North Pole and again, it's
frozen, white tundra and again, it doesn't end for hours .....and hours...and
hours.....
Night falls and everyone tries to sleep. I close my eyes but sleep never comes....and
each time I check outside, it is just pitch blackness.
Then, finally, light starts to appear and on the horizon is
the most amazing sliver of orangey red and yellow.....and I see the beginning
of day stretched across the sky and the
earth that is breath-taking.
We have now risen to 38,000 feet (must remember to ask the
pilot why do we keep increasing altitude?
Only 5 hours to go.....2 more movies and then, finally, I can
see actual mountains...,gorgeous, wonderful mountains of Northern Alberta! Then, slowly, little towns, rivers, farms and
finally, we approach Seattle with the stunning bright colours of fall in their
finest glory of reds, oranges, yellows amid the proud great green trees of the
Pacific Northwest!
We're home!!!
A slight delay in the airport as Michael's bag was gone
through with a fine tooth comb (we all waited for over an hour wondering what
the heck he was doing?!).
Then an easy, comfortable coach ride back through the border and the Villa in Burnaby where we all said our goodbyes and had last hugs before going our separate ways!
Thank you to a great group and hope all the "blog
" readers enjoy our trip "vicariously"!
Until next time!.... JT
