1:40 pm Belgium time 2.5 hrs underway:
Airplane food is not very good under the best of circumstances. Today’s
menu was very poor and even the best choices for me were not very good. It
is just as well as food isn’t my biggest interest right now. Only problem
is, I need a mint to clean some of the taste out of my mouth. The lavatory
is empty so I’ll take my “passenger amenity toothbrush” and go make my
mouth taste better for a while.

2:25 pm Belgium time. We’ve travelled 1689 miles in 3 hrs 24 minutes and
have 6 hrs 17 minutes to go.
The cabin lights are out and most folks are sleeping. I’m reading a book,
New Spring by Robert Jordan. Across from me a fellow who works for
Rolls Royce is putting together some kind of a status PowerPoint show that
shows costs and revenues all going the wrong way. I don’t think I want to
be him in that meeting! The lady next to me is kind of snoozing and kind of
watching a movie. She’s some kind of a consultant in the paper and pulp
business and has over a million miles with Delta. The flight attendant
mentioned that when welcoming the woman on board. The woman replied that
those were the Delta miles and that she had a couple million more on other
airlines.

Three million miles on an airplane is astounding. That’s more than 6 round
trips to the moon. When I was in the Air Force I flew more than 3,000 hours
in the backend of C-130’s, most with headsets on trying to make some sense
of the Chinese radio traffic we were monitoring. That would be about
600,000 miles and about 125 twenty-four hour days. These jets today fly
much faster so she’s probably spent more than 250 days of her life inside
an airplane and another 60 days waiting in airports on airplanes. That’s a
lot of airport and airplane food.

3:50 pm Belgium Time, 4 hrs 50 since we left and 4 hrs 50 to our arrival in
Atlanta. We’ve come 2,170 miles.
We’re on a much more southerly route. We went southwest out of Brussels
towards Paris and then out over the Atlantic Ocean rather than out over
England and Scotland. I suspect this is a little shorter routing. We have a
50 mph headwind and a groundspeed of 500 mph.

The flight attendants make regular trips through the cabin bringing water.
I’ve had a couple of bottles and will drink at least one more. The lady
next to me is sound asleep with a light snore. The guy to the right is a
Vice President and is plowing through e-mail. He has something to so with
fuels and consumption.

Music and a good book are comfortable things. I’m listening right now to
Loreena McKennitt on my iPod and reading. If the seat was a bit more
comfortable, I’d be set. The airplane has lots of little things that need
fixing. Two of the seats in Business Class have no seat padding installed.
It looks like they’ve been cannibalized to fix something on another seat.
Such is life on a nearly bankrupt airline.

5:10 pm Belgium time. 6 hrs 8 underway with 3 hrs 31 left.
The remaining flight time has decreased slightly as we’re nearing the US
coastline. Maybe the winds have lessened? The dynamic flight map says we
have 1,568 miles to go to Atlanta. As we burn off fuel, the airplane gets
lighter and flies faster. We’ve also turned a bit more southwest and
climbed from 33,000 feet to 35,0000 feet. The display just said the
headwind was down to 40 mph.

There is a bit more activity in the cabin. About half of the passengers are
awake and reading or watching the TV monitors. Lunch will be served in
about an hour and a half.

Dang, I pressed Send instead of Save as Draft. I’ll get to learn how some
other features work in this little computer.

7:00 pm Belgium time (11 am in Pocatello) and we’re over the US mainland
about 30 miles from Newark now at 38,000 feet. We’ll kind of follow the
coast south to Atlanta from here. We’ve slowed down — 454 mph groundspeed.
Arrival is still estimated to be 2:41 EST (about an hour and 35 minutes
from now). I’ve been up go to the bathroom and have most everything packed
away. Lunch will be in a few minutes and a hamburger is on the menu. I
wonder what airline food would be if companies who know how to feed and
satisfy the public actually had the catering contract?

Airbus unveiled their new huge airplane — a double decker with the ability
to carry up to 850 passengers. Imagine clearing customs with that many
souls at a time! The initial configurations will have lots of free space,
stores, workout center, and such. It won’t last long. The Boeing 747
started that way and it wasn’t many years before that space was filled with
seats and paying customers.

8:18 pm Belgium time (12:18 in Pocatello). We are about a half hour from
disembarking. The hamburger was edible but would have been thrown out at
any respectable burger joint. This leg is close to an end. Last time
through Atlanta the immigration and customs worked very smoothly. Here’s
hoping it will be so today!

Time to queue this for sending upon arrival.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld