Monday afternoon, May 31, 2010…
Well, the day has finally arrived! I am going to Moscow…it only took three years of trying to get enough designers together to go on this trip. So it is with both excitement and a little nervousness that I get ready to depart.
Check in at the airport went relatively smoothly…good for Jeffery That I was next to him in the check in line and that I had a little room left in my second bag so he was able to get his is in under the weight limit. We designers have it a little harder than the actors when it comes to packing. All they have to take is clothes and maybe a few books. We have to take all that plus a bunch of art supplies. I haven’t seen too many of the actors bags but I have feeling that when we get our luggage in Moscow that they will have smaller bags.
Speaking of bags…I hope that I have better luck than my last flight over the Atlantic when they lost my bag and I didn’t get it for about three days after we arrived. That was for a brass group trip over to Germany. Lucky I had packed my tux in my carry on so I was good to go for our first concert. I would prefer not to repeat that though…
Well, my flight will be filled with reading and watching movies… I’ve never really been able to sleep while traveling. Through a rather unfortunate series of events, I did get to fly first class over to Europe on that brass trip. And guess what…I still wasn’t able to sleep, not even in a cushy, comfy, first class seat. Planes, trains (well I’ve never been on a train before but I will be when we travel over to St. Petersburg), and automobiles, doesn’t matter, can’t sleep…
Until the next update….
OK, It’s now just about 10:45 pm EST about six hours after we took off from Detroit and we are just about half way between Iceland and the English isles. It may not be 11pm back home but it’s about 3:45 local time and dawn is upon is here. Actually, due to the tilt of the earth, our flight path, and travelling at 30,000 ft. above sea level, we’ve been at dusk for the last three hours and it looks like it will just transition right into dawn. The Earth’s kind of cool that way. Of course, we were also warned that because of the tilt of the Earth, it stay light outside until about two or three in the morning and only gets dark for a couple of hours in Moscow during this time of year so that should be kind of interesting.
It’s been a fairly relaxing flight so far. We’ve only had a couple moments of slight turbulence but nothing major. I read Three Sisters and then watched a movie. I chose to watch Invictus, the lasted film directed by Clint Eastwood staring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman at Nelson Mandela. What a great film! If I was a history professor, I would use this in a class. It reminded me a little about a film I watched in high school about the Soweto uprising in South Africa. I can’t remember the title (something involving “One”) but Whoppi Goldberg stated in it.
Speaking of movies…in-flight movie options have improved greatly since I last flew to Europe in college, which was over ten years ago. I remember sitting in first class and thinking that is was cool that we got our own personal screen for watch the movie. The bad thing…there was only one movie option…the Mathew Brodrick version of Godzilla. Needless to say, it was a very long overnight flight (about 14 hours) and I ended up watching it three times because I hadn’t brought a book along with me (I didn’t start reading for fun until I was out of college, stupid me). But now…WOW! Movies on demand! This is pretty nifty. Oh! And not having to pay for head phones to listen to the movie or music…double bonus! I gotta start flying overseas more often…
Just finished a little breakfast and we’ve just arrived over Scotland. Unfortunately, it’s rather overcast so I can’t see the ground. That might not be a big thing for most people but as an avid golfer I wish I could look upon the homeland of golf…but alas, not today…
Only an hour before we land so I should probably put the laptop away…
Update from Amsterdam…
It’s about 3:15am back in Michigan but the sun is up here (or at least I assume it is since it’s a very overcast day) and about 9:15am. Had a little bit of a layover here so I walked around with Pegi and Alli looking for a place to have some coffee. There were plenty of options so it took a while to decide which one to give our money too.
Oh, how I’ve missed the coffee over here. I don’t drink European coffee like I drink coffee in America. Back in the States I usually take it with a little cream and sugar but over here I take it straight up black. I learned when I was over in Germany that it didn’t seem to change the flavor not matter how much cream and sugar I would add so I pretty much stopped trying. All in all I think it adds to the overall experience.
Well, time to get on the plane to Moscow!
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