dh

Well, it’s about 5:30 in the morning and I’m awake, which isn’t that bad… The travel doc’s prescribed Ambien knocked me out hard from about midnight til now, so I’m feeling a bit rested. My computer is running on (44%) battery—I should be able to buy a plug adapter today though. As you can see, the Ethernet Just Worked.â„¢

The trip follows (I might make these their own posts and back-date them later, but it’s really early):

21 Aug. 2006, about 10 a.m. EDT
As the reality of a 10-month break from my current reality… well, it doesn’t so much set it as it overwhelms me. Maybe it was low blood sugar (hadn’t eaten) or the morning chill, but I was shivering as I got out of Sarah’s car at the airport. I’m airside in PIT waiting by gate D78 for my puddle-jumped to JFK, having pretty much exhausted the usefulness of PIT’s free airport-wide wi-fi. [obviously not thinking of the usefulness of blogging directly and bypassing the notebook] Sarah was kind enough to give me the very early morning ride from Morgantown and good conversation, and Dianna was a gracious hostess even at 6 a.m. It was good to see everyone I caught up with [and steal a convocation t-shirt and ice cream and get my hair cut]. This year’s staff in dad/stal looks fun; part of me wishes I were staying behind in carpeted, air-con luxury, but it’s too late for that now.

2:06 p.m.
JFK (from what I’ve seen) is completely unimpressive, right down to denying me a good photo of my Cathay Pacific ride and forcing me down the Longest, Most Convoluted, Jetway, EVAR. JFK is split into many small terminals and once you get past security (again, in each one) Terminal 7 is not that exciting: 12 gates, three food places. On the plus side, McDonald’s was serving soft-serve vanilla cones of Dublin-like proportions for little money.

There sure isn’t much English in this boarding lounge.

To be fair, the inbound view from the Canadair was pretty cool.

2 a.m. EDT, over northern Siberia:
Eating congee over northern Sibera, with six hours left out of sixteen, and it’s so good. Seat 30D was a bulkhead/aisle/exit seat in the first row of economy, so my feet got to ride business class behind the curtain. For a 16 hour flight it was pretty survivable, but more on that later… I’m off to borrow something. The rest of the flight, my landing, and first impressions of Lingnan, next post.