Eighteen Thousand Miles

December 24, 2011

LOS ANGELES, CA -- Eighteen thousand, one hundred and forty one miles later, I have made it back to California. I will post some sort of general overview another time, but I wanted to wrap up the daily blog posts from the trip with one last daily summary of travel.

Last night, we took off from EZE on time, after saying goodbye to our last two co-travelers at our gate. I got a few nice pictures departing the city, had some dinner, and fell asleep.

About three hours later, I woke up to the single worst experience of turbulence I have ever experienced on a jet aircraft. I looked out the window, and it was immediately clear we were in the middle of an electrical storm. I looked up and to the right, and saw on the GPS that we were flying over central Bolivia, right where the Andes Mountains jet out from the Amazonian plains.

Instantly I thought of a few things. First, we weren't terribly south of the equatorial monsoon region. With the most moisture and humidity over such a large area compared with anywhere else in the world, as well as a constant supply of high-intensity sunlight and corresponding heat, this area is capable of producing massive thunderstorms with little to no warning. In Africa, just north these latitudes produce the tropical systems that move west over the Atlantic Ocean and eventually form into Tropical Storms and Atlantic Hurricanes, some of which hit the United States almost every year. In South America, you almost always hit some turbulence here (similar to flying east or west across the United States, you almost always it some turbulence when you fly over the eastern ridge of the Rocky Mountains, usually over Colorado, Wyoming, or New Mexico). This was also the same region that brought down Air France Flight 447.

Over the course of the next 30 seconds, we took direct lightning strikes on our left-side wing three times, and in all probability, took a few more on the plane. At the same time, I was tracking our altitude on GPS, and we lost over 2,100 feet, all of which was unintentional - when you are flying through turbulence, you go up, not down. At this point, I just kind of looked around and chuckled to myself, thinking, "at least everyone knows I made it to Antarctica." Twisted humor, sure, but I made it to all seven continents!

After what seemed like an eternity, we pulled a steep climb as we banked to the north. We climbed from our original cruising altitude of 35,000 feet up to 38,000 feet, and changed from our northwest heading to due north for ten minutes, climbing out of the storm. Below, there was such intense lightning within the storm that there was not a split moment (not second, but moment) wherein the clouds were not illuminated by lightning strikes. I fell back to sleep...

When I woke up, I thought about all of the above with a big sigh of relief. I have flown a lot of miles by any standard, and that really was the closest call I've been a part of. Alas, we proceeded to Houston, where our mid-flight diversion meant we got in about 25 minutes late. Small sacrifice for survival! I got through immigration, baggage claim, customs, and security without much hassle, and then burned through another four hours of a layover. Eventually our last flight of the trip departed on-time, and I slept through most of it.

On final approach into Los Angeles, I couldn't help but think that I was really a world away from the Lemaire Channel, Neko Harbor, and the South Shetland Islands. It was the clearest approach into LAX I have ever experienced - very little pollution, ample sunshine, and actual cleanliness. Despite that, I observed the human sprawl for as far as the eye could see, and it was with new-found admiration I was able to appreciate this fragile world we live in. From the White Continent to Southern California, over the course of more than eighteen-thousand miles of travel, and despite impossible odds, it may be a world away, but it is so clearly all connected; I was back.