Yesterday was a beautiful day in Michigan: warm, sunny, and clear blue skies. It was a perfect day for flying. My plane from Detroit to Toronto was a Beechcraft 1900D, which holds 16 passengers plus two pilots. I simultaneously had a window seat and an aisle seat. There was no door between the cabin and the cockpit, allowing me to look out the windshield. As we taxied on the ground, we followed larger plane. I imagine the view was similar to a dachshund following a great dane. After takeoff, we headed east over Grosse Ile and then Lake St. Clair, with a nice view of Lake Erie out my window. Our cruising altitude was 10,000 feet as was clearly visible on the instrument panel in the cockpit. We flew to Lake Ontario before turning toward the airport. The multitude of sailboats on the great lakes makes them quite lovely this time of year. I was able to watch our descent and approach to the airport through the windshield. The yaw of the plane was quite notiecable from my mid cabin seat. It seems like we were aimed for the left side of the runway. Pretty interesting.
This was my first trip trough the Toronto airport. The band Rush has a famous instrumental song named YYZ, which is the airport code. The beat of the song is YYZ in morse code, which gives it a fairly distinctive sound. The international terminal area where the flight to Istanbul departed had a large Serra sculture consisting of four sections of a sphere.
I did not have a seat until about 90 minutes before the flight departed. I asked for an exit row, but none were available. I offered to sit in first class if they needed my seat and the woman at the counter said they would call my name first if needed. I said I would be willing to make that sacrifice as my seat was 53K. How many rows does this plane (Boeing 777) have I thought? They begam boarding and it became apparent that I would be stuck in my seat. Iwas in the first boarding group:rows 40-53. After walking past the first 52 rows, Ifound my seat in the very last row of the plane. Due to the narrowness of the fusalage, the seating is 2-3-2. I got a window seat.
The flight was run by Turkish Air. There were multiple rounds of food and service, staring with Turkish delight follwed by a full meal.
I am not sure if it was the weather or my position in the plane, but there was constant jostling during the flight. No big bumps, but steady variablility in the direction vector.
I sat next to a Chinese student studying tourism at Waterloo. She was a friend who sat across the aisle from us. They were headed to Istanbul for a conference and were going to do some sightseeing in some of the same places I plan on visiting.
I was able to take a few naps, but it is hard for me to sleep in the tight quarters and din of the plane. Hopefully I will have a better sleep tonight.
Emily surprised me by showing up at the airport. One of Emily's medical faculty students, Mehmet, drove her to the airport to meet me and then brought us back into town. It was nice not having to ride a shuttle and deal with all those logistics. After being dropped off, we went out for a nice Turkish meal consisting of four styles of kebab, plus salad, and bread. I realized Iforgot to pack the jacket Imeant to bring, so we did a little shopping at the local mega mall, but did not find anything decent.
I decided to travel without my laptop on this trip. I purchased a bluetooth keyboard to use with my phone and have typed this post (and the previous) using it. It seems to work well. Ocasionally I will need to leave and return to editing mode because of a synchroization error (I think). The keyboard is a Logitech tablet keyboard and runs on two AAA batteries. I can also "type" with the simple phone interface, but I would rather use keyboard if possible.
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