BERMUDA AND NEW ENGLAND IN SPRING

I refer in the early stage of this piece to the fact that I had not kept a journal some of the recent trips because of a ‘long night’ I had been in. Without going into the details – that’ll be for my memoirs – suffice it to say that I came to realise through a serious of pretty bad events that even if we THINK we have some control of our lives and how they will turn out, in fact the control is tenuous, at best, and does not exist at all, at worst. I truly believe that the storm that blew through our lives then made our marriage stronger and also gave me the strength to face up and deal with the diagnosis of prostate cancer which I had a little over a year later. I touch on some of the issues in another blog - HUBRIS AND NEMESIS

13/12 May 1995 Approaching the Date Line

According to the monitor, we are 39,000 feet over Fiji, travelling at just over 1,000 kph and it is very cold outside -38ºC. I have had a really good meal and several glasses of excellent wine plus a couple of night caps. My darling old Rab is by my side, engrossed in her book. (At this stage I commented: We just hit some turbulence there. And went on) Isn’t it odd how, when flying you always hit turbulence when you are trying to do something like eating, drinking, writing or even peeing. When you are slumped in your seat like a veggie it is as calm as a mill pond (or milk pond as one side of the family insists the phrase is). Start to serve the drinks – and away you go. Also of course, approaching the Date Line, like approaching the Equator, is bound to be bumpy – at least that’s what I always used to tell Matt when we flew together as a family. 

I never realised until now, watcing the flight monitor on my little screen that Samoa is about the last place the sun sets each day. And also that Fiji is one of the first. There is a winery in New Zealand which boasts that its grapes are the freshest in the world because they see the sun first every day. That’s probably because there are probably not too many vineyards in Fiji, Tongatapu or Noumea, all of which beat New Zealand by a considerable margin.

I have not kept a written diary for a number of trips now. There are many reasons, from despair to technology. The former because my soul went into a long night in March 1992 after the awful sunset of April 1991; the latter because, when I was coming out of that dark place, I tried to catch my feelings in short pieces about my travels  on my portable PC. (Some of these can be seen on my other blog The Making of a Paradigm  ) Some seemed quite good by my standards and even Matt, who provided valuable input and suggested I record my feelings about the experience of travelling rather than merely drily recording the facts, felt that they were not all bad. But that was not quite what I wanted, so I thought I would try a combination – back to the pen and ink but record more of the emotional side. It will be interesting to see what the outcome is. (To me, as I read through my journals, it seems they are still short on emotion and long on facts – leopards can’t change their spots and us oldsters – we are older than Babyboomers after all - still find it a bit awkward at times to hang our emotional washing on the line for all to see.)

So….to set the stage for this journey: We are on a Qantas flight on a ‘stretched’ Boeing 747 Jumbo from Melbourne via Sydney to Los Angeles and then on to Philadelphia. (more turbulence here as the Date Line gets closer). All is well with the world – my business is doing well, Matt is coming right, the dogs will be OK I am sure and we are looking forward to a good trip. We have had our ups and downs since the last time I wrote up a trip journal – too many to record now. Out of these awful times I think we have all gained some strength. As I was saying to Rab only yesterday morning when we took the dogs for their walk, although I would not have wished to be subjected to these trials, I think that the end result has been positive.

We are flying First Class in accordance with our current principle – if you cannot fly in luxury, stay at home. I am really unsure how many Pacific crossings I have made in the last few years. This is probably the fifth I would say. The flight time from Sydney to Los Angeles today is estimated at 12 hours and 35 minutes (still at it recording facts!!!) But I still think it is important to do so. There has been so much change in our lives and we forget change so quickly – who could remember all the data which flowed in? I find it fascinating to look back at what we did, what we paid, how long the flights were. The flights to Johannesburg or  Sydney from Europe seem so long to us today, but it was in our lifetime that the former took over a week and the latter almost a fortnight. What will the next fifty years see? One of the current significant changes is the incorporation of in seat personal videos – a recent innovation for First Calls and Business Class only at this stage. We no longer have to strain to watch a screen somewhere ahead of us, but can choose what we want to see! I have just watched Once Were Warriors and will move now to Stargate. Seems an appropriate film somehow, as we do our own bit of time travelling and cross the Date Line into yesterday. 

(It is interesting to note that lie flat seats had clearly not yet been introduced. We used to think that the way the First Class seast inclined - and the leg room we had - were the epitome of travel comfort. But they weren't a patch on the lie flat seats!)