en route

Sallie says

Imagine what might happen if you left home without a wristwatch, cellphone and/or blackberry? No, there's no answer just imagine that. I'm doing it.

We left New York on Thursday morning via La Guardia for Toronto and then straight on to Beijing. Like making movies, so much of your time is spent waiting. Waiting for a taxi, the traffic, the airline personnel to check you in, the TSA security....you get it. Finally it's your moment in front of the camera or on the plane. And Air Canada was trumps. I had been imagining this flight in my darkest moments as sitting up in a straightback chair for 18 hours, like the night watchman do in certain Manhattan ATM's. But we quickly learned that not only was our NY to Toronto flight undersold but so was the Beijing flight. Empty seats which I decided quickly to liberate for myself, Arnie and Kate. We managed to spread out in such a way that what I did without a wristwatch, cellphone and blackberry was to sleep. Even clutching the newest Lee Child's book, I was that sleeper you sometimes see on planes. And it was only 12 hours and amazingly enough the plane was clean, the service was mostly helpful and food plentiful, hot and tasty. I know I'm writing like I never travel but too many trips on domestic airlines to Arizona can make you really quite appreciative of a flight like the one we had. Yeah Air Canada.

The Beijing Airport is newly constructed or some parts of it are newly constructed and the whole thing will look like a dragon! It's high tech, clean and enormous making New York airports look pretty third world! You see how finely organized Beijing is about the Olympics. Quick lines through immigration, an airport train and squads of efficient looking personnel are positioned everywhere, and the whole atmosphere is very impressive. Actually what was just as impressive as the corporate can do culture was the ability of our guide to reach out person to person and cut through a real problem we had when Kate left her fanny pack and new digital camera in a ladies room in the airport. I thought it was gone forever -- who gets stuff back from airport ladies rooms --because we couldn't go back through immigration but as we were driving from the airport in heavy New York type traffic, I mentioned this problem to William Li our guide. He picked up his cell phone and in a matter of seconds called someone to find out that a fanny pack with a camera and pack of Mongolian playing cards had been turned in. Holy Cow. Now how did he do that? That's my idea of being a fixer.

We are comfortably ensconced on the 15th floor of a really nice hotel in Central Beijing and we've all been down to the rococo Egyptian swimming pool. A perfect antidote for too much time spent on a plane. We also met one of the families who arrived in Beijing today....more time to see them for the next two weeks.

Tomorrow we will actually go out and see stuff. We are so off schedule in terms of time that
we will probably be up by 6!
I'