Technical difficulties are delaying my posting. Hopefully posting in Nanchang will work out better...

Blog Entry – Realtime July 4, 2007 – or is it July 5?
Happy Independence Day! We have crossed the International Date Line and I am blogging from the future.

Here we are in hour 5 of our first flight. 1/3 of the way complete with our air time today and so far the accommodations are reasonable. We have power at our seats for the laptop and DVD player, but at the same time, NW Airlines has a rather good selection of in-flight entertainment – even for Emma. She watched Monsters Inc on the in-flight player while Karen and I enjoyed Blades of Glory. Now Emma is on to Care Bears and Roly Poly Oly (selections we brought), while Karen is busy assisting our neighbor in queuing up The Bodyguard on her player. There is something about that movie – our neighbor in front is watching his second consecutive viewing of The Bodyguard. Not sure if this is the Whitney or the Kevin mojo, but something must be going on for sure. Must be their on-screen chemistry.

I am watching the real time map and see that we are now over Russia, crossing the Sea of Okhotsk on our way to Tokyo. I’m surprised how far north we’ve flown – I thought this would be more over water. It’s hard to say what time it really is – 8:45 pm in Seattle, but my flight map tells me it's 12:45 pm at our destination in several different languages. And for those counting, it's -50C outside but significantly warmer here in the airplane.