Flying to Viet Nam

It was March 10, 2010. We rose at an awful hour (I'd driven to Patty's house in Denver the afternoon before), and her son took us to the Denver airport to catch a United Air Lines flight to San Francisco that departed at six in the morning. From there, we took another UAL flight that went to Hong Kong and then Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam.

 Airliners that cross the Pacific often do so by flying far to the north. I don't know whether this is a "great circle" route or if they just avoid jet stream headwinds enroute. On my globe, putting one finger on San Francisco and the other on Hong Kong, a line between them should be a great circle. We were well north of that. Though it was overcast, the UAL moving map (which they show for a few minutes between movies) showed us north of the Aleutian Islands.

We finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by those who live there, though they revere Ho as their George Washington) later in the afternoon.  Patty not only arranged all our flights, she also arranged our hotels. And there was a hotel vehicle waiting for us. Off we went into the city!

Above is a photo that must have been taken somewhere in extreme eastern Siberia. It's a total snowpack, though I was experimenting with something in Photoshop and the color isn't quite snow-like. Here it is, anyway...