Flight Paths

Today, just for fun, I sat down and listed all the flights that I took during the three years that I lived in Al Ain: 49 flights in 19 trips (involving 18 airports). Since it almost always took three flights to get from the Emirates to home (and then three back), they added up quickly.

Then I got curious as to how many miles were involved. So I put all 49 of those flights into the Great Circle Mapper: 115,000 miles (or 184,000 kms). The great thing about that site is that it not only displays the distance but a map of the routes that you enter. So the flight paths of all the flights that I took look like this:

Post from Amsterdam

I'm sitting here at the airport in Amsterdam waiting for my flight and using a paid internet terminal (only 6 Euros for a half hour!).  Everything is going well so far, except that I'm very tired.  DC10s were not designed for people my size to sleep on them.

 

My body clock is already so far off.  I ate lunch at 12:00 noon here (McDonald's, a big mac value meal, only 6 Euros), but my body thinks that it is 6:00.

 

Some observations about the airport here, of the "it's not wrong, just different" variety. 

 

*  The clerks at the stores here seem really reluctant to make eye contact.

*  They sell porn DVDs in the shops, out in the open.

*  I can't find the chairs Rita told me about.

*  They have a casino.

 

The flight over here was really interesting, especially when we flew over Ireland, Wales, England and Holland.  The farms and the cities that I saw in Holland are all rectangular, the ones in the British Isles much more haphazard.