Enroute to Atlanta

According to the schedule, we would arrive in Atlanta at 2:26 pm Atlanta
time, or about an hour from now. We’ve got a tailwind and should arrive
about 20 minutes early. I like early!

Someone near me has their cell phone turned on as my Bose noise cancelling
headset picks up the phone trying to find service. I’m always a good boy
and turn off the cell phone radio on my Blackberry when I’m supposed to and
turn it back on when it’s allowed. So far as I know, there really isn’t any
risk to the flight instruments, it’s just that the ground-based cell phone
system isn’t geared for the speed at which jet travel goes past cell towers
and the number of towers visible at the same time.

Got an interesting comment posted last night to a weblog entry from about
18 months ago. Dave had been stationed at Johnson AFB in Japan during the
Korean War (some 50 years ago) and is once again living in Japan near
Hiroshima. He was searching the Internet looking for references to Johnson
AFB and found my blog entry featuring a picture of James and Momo (the dog)
outside our rented house when we were living off base at Johnson AFB in the
late 1960’s. Dave posted a comment wanting to know how to get there and if
the base was still in existance. I sent him back as much info as I had. The
base is now a Japanese Self Defense Forces facility and is named Iruma Air
Base after the nearby city. I hope he gets back there and shares some
pictures! It’ll be many years before I get back there, if ever. Good luck,
Dave.

The flight has been very uneventful. I’m in an aisle seat on the inside of
this 767 airplane. In 1st class the seats are arranged 2 on the left, an
aisle, 2 in the middle, an aisle, and 2 on the right. The woman sitting on
my right is flying in 1st class for the first time. She’s going with her
husband (who gave up his upgrade to sit in the back so his wife could be up
front — what a guy!) On a business trip to Ft. Meyers, Florida. She’s
sound asleep — perhaps because she’s completely undisturbed because her
two children are at home staying with grandparents.

Speaking of grandkids in a round-about way, Peter and Maurene called to let
us know that they are expecting twins! At least one of them is a boy. The
other fetus was playing hide and go seek thus making determination of the
sex indeterminate. Very exciting news!

We’ve started our serious descent into the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport so we
should be on the ground in 20 minutes or so. We must not have made as good
time as forecast from the cockpit at the beginning of the flight as that
puts us pretty close to on time. No early this leg.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld