I hear that in flying from Chicago to Tokyo you pass over the North Pole. It's odd how we don't think of things as far away in terms of north and south; when we hear how long it takes to fly to New Zealand (random tidbit my head won't get rid of for some reason: Chicago/NZ is the farthest a passenger plane can fly nonstop) we just spin the globe, trace our finger, puzzle at how the distance doesn't really seem that much farther than to Europe... but we forget that the earth is a sphere and a sphere is just as round from top to bottom. Use a string. The shortest route to Tokyo is OVER the Earth.

The shortest route from Los Angeles to Taipei, Taiwan (my first stop) flies over Alaska. Having never flown over the Pacific, I was looking forward to seeing a lot of this (coral reefs, looking like shining circles, reflective crooked rings - I didn't know these existed, scattered everywhere in the southern Pacific, until I got myself addicted to dragging myself around the Earth on Google maps) but I will be more likely to be seeing miles and miles of cold, dark blue. Although we will be flying in the middle of the night, and I probably won't be seeing miles and miles or anything except the insides of my own eyelids. The sun will beat us - barely.

Flying back from England in 2003 on my birthday, I celebrated six times. My birthday hour - 12:03 PM - kept happening and happening and happening. A pretzel an hour. More ice in my ginger ale. What time is it? Noon again? Bring me a butterscotch sundae.

This time I will age a day as I pass over an invisible line drawn through the water, and coral reefs and fish and, perhaps, fishermen. If I die in Indonesia at the age of 122 years and 165 days, will I have legitimately beat out Jeanne Calment for the title of oldest person ever?