Somewhere Over The Pacific Ocean -
The Flight To Sydney -- 9-08-96

Date: Sun, 08 Sep 1996 02:30:09
Subject: The Flight to Sydney

International Date Line
Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean Sunday, September 1

G'Day, Mates.

Goodness, this is a long flight. We have been up in this huge airplane for almost seven hours now... we are half way from Los Angeles to Sydney, and we have just crossed the International Date Line, somewhere between Hawaii and Fiji. It has been a long flight, and I've had a lot of fun, but we still have seven more hours left. I don't think I can take that much more fun.

We are flying on a Quantas airplane. Quantas is an Australian airline, and I found out a funny thing. Australians measure things differently than we do in St. Louis. For instance, I told you that Australia was more than 4000 miles from Los Angeles. Well, Australians don't measure in feet and miles. They use meters and kilometers. And I also found out that Sydney is 12,000 kilometers from Los Angeles. Mr. Rogers told me that there about 1,000 kilometers in 600 miles. So when I did the arithmetic I figured that the distance is really about 7,200 miles. That's a long way to go in a plane.

It was so exciting to go aboard such a huge plane. It's so big that I didn't think it would really fly. But it does, and it is a smooth flight, too. The first thing I had to do when I sat down is to put a seat belt around me... just like I do when I take a ride in the car. After everybody found their assigned seat, they shut the big doors, started the big engines, and pushed the plane away from the terminal with a powerful little truck. Then the pilot taxied to the end of the runway. When we finally started going down the runway to take off, faster and faster, it pushed me back into my seat. It was kind of like starting up from a traffic signal in an auto, but it was much stronger and much longer. It was fun. Then the plane tilted its nose up into the sky, and I could see the ground dropping away underneath me. When we were up in the air the pilot told us that we were going more than 800 Km (that's short for kilometers) per hour. When I figured that out, I found out that that's more than 500 miles per hour.

So far, I've had some fun. They served us a tasty lunch. Then I got to listen to some music on the earphones they handed out to all the passengers. Then they showed a movie... that wasn't too much fun because it was a grown-up movie. They will show two more movies before the flight is over. Then Mrs. Rogers read a neat story to me. Then I even read one of Mr. Rogers' magazines myself.

Well, it's been a long trip so far, and we're only half way through. We have seven more hours to go. I've been asking Mr. Rogers if we're there yet, but he keeps telling me that we'll get there when we get there.

So, I guess I'll take a nap now. Maybe that will help the rest of this flight to go faster.

I'll tell you more about my trip when we get to Sydney.

Your friend, Woodsy