Flying Across the Pacific
Bekah, Alfonso and I met at San Francisco International Airport for our flight to Los Angeles. In LA, we met Dale and boarded our plane to Sidney. The flight to Sidney takes about 14 hours and 45 minutes; it’s long. I slept most of the way, the best sleep I’ve ever had on an airplane.
We left LA at 11 pm on October 1 and arrived in Sidney at 6:30 am on October 3. We completely missed October 2 because we were flying from east to west ahead of the sunrise; we crossed the International Date Line.
The first people to “lose” a day like this were the sailors on Magellan’s YEAR expedition from Spain to the southern tip of South America to the Philippines and the “Spice Islands”. Magellan and his sailors had amazing adventures; many of them died, including Magellan. However, a few managed to sail into the Indian Ocean and around the southern tip of Africa to return to Spain. They were the first people with a calendar to circumnavigate the globe. When they arrived, they were a day behind relative to everyone else. The sailors and especially their navigator didn’t know how they had missed a day since detailed records were kept of the entire expedition. They had counted the sunsets accurately.
We now know that each day that you travel from east to west is a bit longer because you travel with the day; you are going the opposite direction from the turn of the earth, you are turning more slowly so your days are longer. All these little bits add up to a full day if you go entirely around the world. If you go from west to east, you are spinning a bit faster than the earth, and each day is a bit shorter. You lose a day when you circumnavigate the globe from west to east. To keep calendars and clocks consistent, an “International Date Line” has been defined. It runs north-south through the Pacific Ocean (with some funny jogs in it). By international agreement, the west side of this line is one calendar day later than the east side. We crossed it going from east to west, and we “lost” a day. We will get a new day back when we return, crossing the date line from west to east. If you have just the right flights, you can land at the same calendar and clock time that you take off even if you spend hours in the air!
After our hours in the air, we had a brief stop in a rainy Sidney. Within an hour, we were on a plane to Christchurch, flying above continuous cloud cover and then puffy clouds with white caps visible below. I’m writing this looking out at those clouds, wondering about the weather to the south. The weather is really important. It has been bad at McMurdo and some of the flights from Christchurch were delayed. We don’t know if they’ll catch up in time for us to fly south on October 6 as scheduled. We still have a couple of days for flights to catch up - if the weather is good.
The adventure has begun.
(PS: The post date for this blog is October 2, because it is still October 2 in California!)
We left LA at 11 pm on October 1 and arrived in Sidney at 6:30 am on October 3. We completely missed October 2 because we were flying from east to west ahead of the sunrise; we crossed the International Date Line.
The first people to “lose” a day like this were the sailors on Magellan’s YEAR expedition from Spain to the southern tip of South America to the Philippines and the “Spice Islands”. Magellan and his sailors had amazing adventures; many of them died, including Magellan. However, a few managed to sail into the Indian Ocean and around the southern tip of Africa to return to Spain. They were the first people with a calendar to circumnavigate the globe. When they arrived, they were a day behind relative to everyone else. The sailors and especially their navigator didn’t know how they had missed a day since detailed records were kept of the entire expedition. They had counted the sunsets accurately.
We now know that each day that you travel from east to west is a bit longer because you travel with the day; you are going the opposite direction from the turn of the earth, you are turning more slowly so your days are longer. All these little bits add up to a full day if you go entirely around the world. If you go from west to east, you are spinning a bit faster than the earth, and each day is a bit shorter. You lose a day when you circumnavigate the globe from west to east. To keep calendars and clocks consistent, an “International Date Line” has been defined. It runs north-south through the Pacific Ocean (with some funny jogs in it). By international agreement, the west side of this line is one calendar day later than the east side. We crossed it going from east to west, and we “lost” a day. We will get a new day back when we return, crossing the date line from west to east. If you have just the right flights, you can land at the same calendar and clock time that you take off even if you spend hours in the air!
After our hours in the air, we had a brief stop in a rainy Sidney. Within an hour, we were on a plane to Christchurch, flying above continuous cloud cover and then puffy clouds with white caps visible below. I’m writing this looking out at those clouds, wondering about the weather to the south. The weather is really important. It has been bad at McMurdo and some of the flights from Christchurch were delayed. We don’t know if they’ll catch up in time for us to fly south on October 6 as scheduled. We still have a couple of days for flights to catch up - if the weather is good.
The adventure has begun.
(PS: The post date for this blog is October 2, because it is still October 2 in California!)
