Actually, a journey of 4,530 miles...

As I sit in New York's JFK airport, I am slightly annoyed by having to go through security again on a domestic flight, but otherwise elated to be on my way to Lithuania. It seems that the "Journey of a Thousand Miles" is in fact 4,530 miles; but at least all has gone well to this point. In less than two short hours, I will begin the first I what I hope will be many hops across "the Puddle" we know as the Atlantic Ocean. I have taken a few photos so far, but those will come in due time. In the short jump from Dulles to JKF there were a great number of very fine examples of tidal wetlands and a few barrier islands, along with what appeared to be some algal blooms in the Chesapeake Bay. I will have to look closer at the images to see if the streaks of different colors really are differences of of turbidity in the water, or just tricks of the polarized window.


All the same, I would welcome prayers for safety in the remaining travels. It really is somewhat surreal when you consider this system we have of cramming as many people as you can into a little, pressurized metal tubes and sending them hurtling through the void, propelled by the combustion of volatile gases from decomposed organic materials thousands of years old. And all of that just to get between cites thousands of miles apart. Anyway, enough of that over-dramatized mental meandering, onward to Vilnius!


p.s. As I am sure I have mentioned to many of you already, I am REALLY hoping to get a good view out the window of the Warsaw to Vilnius flight, as there is shale-gas drilling currently ongoing in Southern Poland.


Posted from: Gate A3, JFK Airport, Jamaica, New York, USA