We left LAX about eight hours ago. We are about half way between LA and Canton. They served us a nice meal at about 2 am CST. The friendly young lady would smile at the (few) Americans on board, say “pasta!,” and hand over a tray of American food. She would look at Chinese people, say something garbled and unintelligible, and hand over Chinese food. Nice. They turned out the lights soon afterward and everyone but me went to sleep. I slept for a couple of hours but that’s all I can muster for now. Nice and dark and cool and quiet in here.
We are taking a giant arc to the north in our route to Guangzhou. From LA we traveled straight up the coast over the Pacific to Alaska, passing over Anchorage an hour or two ago. We are at the top of the arc now, having just crossed the international date line in the Bearing Straits. We are now in Russian airspace. We are traveling at about 575 land-miles-per-hour. The temperature outside the plane is a balmy minus 61 degrees. I know these things because it is all mapped out in front of me on the screen behind the adjacent seat. We still have about 4000 miles to go. Not much to do, so I am coding data. I don’t have much battery time left so I had better hurry.
Here in economy class they’ve got us crammed in nine across. We are on China Southern, a publicly traded company controlled by the government of the People’s Republic. I hope that friendly young comrade comes around with some coffee soon. I’ll probably have to settle for tea.
We sat in a group of three seats. This nice woman was grouped with us. At the outside she did not seem especially fond of us but by the end we were fast friends.
We left LAX about eight hours ago. We are about half way between LA and 
