Day Two

     Day One blended into Day Two in window seat 63A aboard the "Miss Chief", a ten-hour Virgin Atlantic flight from Las Vegas to London on the most technically-advanced passenger jet, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It was a comfortable flight in part because I had economy seating's version of business class: no one sitting next to me. 

    There was a Brit in his twenties in the aisle seat, and he allowed me to put my overstuffed, all-in-one daypack in the unused middle seat floor space. I think he felt this entitled him to a larger claim on the middle seat, because he woke me up hours later bumping into me as he tried unsuccessfully to sleep flat on TWO seats. Experience will teach him: can't be done. 

     One of the many things that makes the 787 so remarkable is the fact that it's a 50% plastic plane. Well, it's advanced carbon fiber-epoxy composite, but the point is that it's 50% non-metal. Most of the fuselage, or cylindrical cabin, is made of the composite. It's lighter, and that makes the plane more fuel-efficient, but it comes with some other benefits. One, because it is so much stronger than the traditional aluminum fuselage, is that they can keep the cabin at a higher pressure, so the cabin air is closer to normal sea-level air pressure (like being at 6000 feet, instead of a typical plane's 8000 foot pressure). 

    It also allowed for the largest plane windows in any passenger jet, again because the stronger carbon fiber can withstand the higher stresses of a bigger window.

I'm not crazy about the electrically-controlled window dimming scheme, mainly because the someone in the plane crew controls all the windows and decides when it is going to be nighttime for everyone.

    The wings are largely carbon fiber composite also. Carbon fiber is way stronger than aluminum and it allowed Boeing to create a wing profile that is more efficient, but also more flexible than a normal aluminum wing. Here are two pictures of MY wing on the left side (I don't know who was looking out for the other wing). I put the phone against the window in exactly the same spot, so the wing relative to the photo frame would be the same. The first was in the air (although after most of the fuel was burned up, so the plane was lighter), and the second obviously on the ground.

I can't estimate very well, but I'd say the wing in the air was deflected up at least 10 feet.

    There was a nice optical phenomenon that the cool side of the plane (left side) could see, once the sun was up over the eastern Atlantic. There was a uniform cloud layer a ways below, and the shadow of the planes water vapor contrail could be seen. What was cool was at the head of the dark contrail shadow was a bright "aura" from the sun diffracting around the plane:

    We landed at Heathrow at about 4:30 pm, and I breezed through immigration and customs with only my adventure daypack to worry about, and got the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station. I love the massive, Victorian-era (?) train sheds all over Europe, and Paddington has a pretty good one.

    With a just a little time available, I walked around Paddington Station, mostly on the side of the Grand Union Canal, which had a mixture of converted barges (as bars or restaurants), private ones (Grammy will recognize them), and run-down rusting hulks. 

    I got to my goal here to see the "Rolling Bridge," a little pedestrian bridge along the canal. When needed to get out of the way, it rolls up into a big octagon. Unfortunately, I could only photograph the un-rolled state.

    I meant to walk to my hotel next to St. Paul's, but the changed Virgin Atlantic schedule didn't leave enough time, so I took a London black cab. When I was waiting, it seemed to me that some of them were all-electric, but the one I took was hybrid. It's such a brilliant design: seats six (3 seats fold up) with an enormous central floor space to take all the luggage you could image. A trunk seems stupid for a cab now. Almost made be wish I had some luggage...

    My hotel is the Leonardo Royal Hotel, one block from the Thames, and one block from St. Pauls. I picked it because it is a short walk across the Millennium Bridge to the Sam Wanamaker Theatre, next to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. I had 8 pound standing room tickets to a production of Titus Andronicus. Abbie told me about this theater, which is really cool because--as a true replica of a Jacobean-era theater--it is entirely illuminated (when the production is in progress) by candle chandeliers, and candles placed in strategic spots on the stage. 

    No one ever reads or watches Titus Andronicus and I can see why. It ends up with nearly everyone who appears on stage getting murdered, three hands severed, a rape, two severed heads, and someone's dead, minced relative showing up in a pie. It was an all-female cast, and had a musical accompaniment with cello, harpsichord, and trombone. The coolest part of the production was the ending, which had the surviving characters extinguishing the candles on the lowered candelabras one by one (representing of course all the life that had been extinguished, etc. etc.), ending the production in the dark.

    The show got out at 10:30 and I walked back across the Thames to my hotel...