Past Bahgdad...

8:10am 5/15/06 - I have got to talk to my travel agent. 18 hours in the dead center of a plane with 2 aisles really doesn’t do much for me. I highly recommend doing the online confirmation/pick a seat 24 hours before the flight thing if your airline allows it for these long flights.

The flight over the Atlantic was only 7 hours and we straddled the coast all the way to Newfoundland then curved just below Greenland and then over the north Atlantic to London. I tried to sleep but it was really late afternoon MST. I called Phil Heyneker in London. He is doing well and planning on returning stateside before Drew’s bachelor party so he is planning on coming out for it. London was rushed as you have to go through security again even if you are just connecting. A 3 hour layover turned into a “better keep it moving” trek through a maze of “piers” and corridors. If it weren’t for the DoD employee from the Pentagon that sat next to me on the transatlantic flight I probably would have gotten lost (they also gave me a quick lesson in dialing internationally). He and some other Pentagon employees were headed to Doha, Qatar for a conference, so we were all headed to the same terminal. I think the weirdest thing about that transatlantic red eye is that you leave and it is light on the east coast and by the time you cross the US/Canada border doing a “great circle route”, the sun has set… then about 4 hours later before you get over the British Isles, the sun is up. Makes for quick night.

We are flying past Baghdad right now, 41k feet. We have another hour+ before we land in Bahrain at 6:30. I have been trying to figure out what the time difference is between MST and Bahrain and I think it is 9 hours. Gulf Air is the airline down to Bahrain. I saw a on board chef running around on the plane and the female gate agents wore these hats that look like a fez with a square yard or so of cloth neatly hung off the back of the hat over the back of their heads, neck and upper back. The cloth changed colors in the light from red to blue. Either that or I am seeing things from lack of sleep.

That’s it for now, I will post this when I get to an internet connection.
A bit scrambled but doing really well.