Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009 Eastern Australia Time
We made it to Sydney! On time, just as scheduled. Since the flight from Michigan arrived in LAX at 2:00 pm PST and the flight to Sydney wasn't to depart until 10;50 pm, we had wisely reserved a room at a hotel right there at LAX. That proved to be a very good move. We were able to relax, get a nice long nap, and have a light dinner before going back to the airport terminal.
The flight from LA to Sydney was 15 hours. Fortunately the plane (a Boing 777) was only half full, so we were able to lie down (in shifts) across the row of 3 seats. This was particularly beneficial for Tyler with his back problems, since lying down is about the only position that is pain-free. Paula can sleep anywhere, anytime, in almost any position.
Watching the flight path on the built-in screen that graces every seat was an educational experience. We assumed that flights over long stretches of open water would just follow the great circle route. A great circle is any circumference of the earth. If you take a globe of the earth and stretch a rubber band around it in any direction, the circle defined by the rubber band is a "great circle" if the plane it defines goes through the center of the earth. Then the path from any departure to any destination along that circle is the true 3-dimensional shortest path. In fact, though, the plane flew due west out of LAX until it hit an international flyway going south to Hawaii. From there it flew a direct course to one pacific island after another, finally going over the Solomon Islands and then setting a course direct to Sydney. I suppose they do this so they always remain close to an emergency landing airport in case they lose an engine. The whole flight from LA to Sydney was about 8,000 miles. We landed Tuesday morning about 8:50 am Sydney time.
By the way, we now at long last have the answer to the traditional question about whether toilets flush clockwise or counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. The answer, based on experiments recently conducted in our hotel room in Potts Point (a neighborhood of Sydney): NEITHER! Our toilet flushes straight down without any detectable swirling. What a disappointment! We'll give further experimental results from Auckland, NZ in a couple of weeks.
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