Day 1 - Friday, Sept 13 - Woodstock to Newark, Toronto and beyond

We were up at 5am in order to leave by 5:30. The almost-full moon was very bright all night but set just before we got up so it was quite dark with a perfectly clear sky. Although the temperature was in the mid-80s and it was very humid the day before. It was a chilly 45 degrees in the morning.

Not surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of traffic until we got to New Jersey. The traffic was stop and go for a while on the Garden State Parkway but we made it to the airport by 8:45. Getting to the rental car return is very confusing and we ended up driving around the entire airport road before finding the right exit.

Check-in was very quick as we were here very early for our 10:25 flight to Toronto.

It was also relatively quick getting through the TSA pre-check line although it was longer because my mother had to be patted down as she has a pacemaker and can't go through the regular x-ray machine.

We splurged on business class tickets on Air Canada so we were able to relax and have breakfast in the lounge before our flight departure at 10:25.

We left right on time on a small commuter jet with two seats on one side and one seat on the other. The flight up was smooth, arriving in Toronto at noon.

The Air Canada lounge in Toronto was very nice with a “fine dining” restaurant. I had an appetizer of venison carpaccio with wild mushrooms and tahini sauce. For the main course I had a veal roast with wild mushroom gravy and a glass of Pino Grigio.

Our long flight left Toronto at 2:30. It was on a Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” - this was the first time I had been on a 787 and it was very nice, with 8’ ceilings. We had “lie flat” seats which were very comfortable. I slept / rested for 3-4 hours in an attempt to sync up with our destination time. Beijing is 12 hours ahead of NY so it was 2:30am in Beijing when we departed.

In the middle of our 13 hour flight, I looked out the window and saw what I thought was a full moon – Friday was the full moon. This seemed strange as our arrival was scheduled for 4pm so we would never see the sunset but I thought because of our route that the moon might be out. Our flight went within 75 miles of the North Pole, going up over Greenland and then down over Russia and Mongolia to China. When I went to the restroom, the window by the exit door showed that it was bright sunshine out. It turns out that instead of having window shades, the windows on the 787 can be made to automatically darken and the sun looked like the moon!

I watched 4 movies on the flight, none of which were very memorable but I was too drowsy to read and didn’t want to sleep too much in order to get used to the new schedule.

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