Once on the plane I settled into a nice window, bulkhead seat and off we went.

The path was a straight out of the runway at LAX, turning right only after we had cleared Ventura County.  We continued up the coast towards Alaska.  Somewhere west of San Francisco I fell asleep (while watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Rory Gilmore had better stick to Yale, this movie was not very good).

I was awoken a few hours later by an attendant.  We ran into really heavy turbulence south of the Aleutians.  I had a glass of water in the drink holder and had put my hand over the top of it while I slept.  The attendant had to wake me up to get the glass.   I fell back asleep as the plane followed a course around the Pacific Rim, as if afraid to stray too far from land.

We crossed over Okinawa and landed in Taipei.   After a pointless hour spent sitting in front of several duty-free shops we left for Singapore.  Pretty uneventful.   In retrospect, on my first trip I must have been beside myself with excitement, because this trip seemed like just a longer version of my usual trips to Burbank.

For Ian, as promised, a map of my course across the Pacific.