We were up by 4am to leave by 5am to pick up my younger daughter, Tamar, at 5:30am, to get to Dulles airport at 6am, where we got through the entire ticketing process and security within 30 minutes so were way early for our 8am flight. I can never get the timing of these things right.

We had two flights to take us to Shanghai, the first to Chicago and the second from Chicago to Shanghai. The second which was scheduled to take off a little after 10:30 was about ½ hour late due to debris on the runway, a new reason, at least for me, for a delay, and took just under 14 hours; the longest flight I have ever had.

BUT it turns out after talking to one of the United staff on the plane, only the second longest run that United has, the longest being from Chicago to Hong Kong, which takes about 15 hours. All I know is that after a lunch and a movie and a brief nap, when one of your daughters asks how much longer to go and you answer 10 hours, it means the flight is more than long enough.

The highlight of the trip happened just after we landed. We had been warned by announcements on the plane a few times and then again when we landed that Chinese authorities would be boarding the plane and taking everyone’s temperature one-at-a-time to verify that no-one had a fever. Their goal was to check for swine flu. Evidently if you had a fever or were within three rows of someone who did, you had a chance of being quarantined for up to a week.

When we got to the gate, there was an announcement that we were the first flight that they had decided to stop checking and that therefore we could immediately deplane and proceed. When we entered the terminal, we did have to pass a scanner which evidently was checking body temperatures but a variety of Chinese officials with masks on, but otherwise got through customs in a matter of a few minutes.

Shanghai

My first impressions of Shanghai were that it reminds me of New York but with a LOT more Chinese Restaurants. Lots and lots of construction. Very vibrant, felt pretty western actually. The hotel we are staying at, the Huating Towers, which used to be a Sheraton is pretty nice.

We saw but did not ride the maglev, which is a high speed wheel-less train which goes between the airport and the center of Shanghai. The train which evidently cost over $1.2 billion to build goes up to 270 miles per hour. It evidently can go faster but the less than 8 minute trip that it takes at that speed isn’t long enough for it to get to anything higher. We were told two or three times that the Shanghai maglev went faster than any comparable train in Japan, in case we were unaware.

We had dinner with an old friend of mine who I worked with at Sun Microsystems, and who returned to China to take over her family business a few years ago. We went to a local dumpling restaurant with her husband, who is of Chinese descent but was born in New York City and grew-up in New Jersey and young son. While my family was fading as the night went on from the flight, the food was great.

Back at the hotel, we ran into many of the people who will be with us over the next few weeks including a number we had met at the 2006 Turkey eclipse trip. We staggered back upstairs and were sound asleep by 9:30pm.

Accessing the Web

Thus far I am unable to access facebook, twitter, or dorobekinsider; so have no idea as to if/how any of this is being received. I do post after I send a copy to Chris, a copy to www.ourownlittlecorner.com so to the extent anyone cares hope they look at one of these locations.