And with the trip to Hong Kong I've managed to accomplish one of my goals: circle the globe (although I don't think mine was as impressive as that of Magellan or Drake). That said, at least it's impressive to me because I didn't get my first passport until I was forty-two. I had this maddening little sliver of land between Beijing, China (traveled east to get there) and Melbourne, Australia (traveled west to get there) which I didn't know when or if I'd ever fill in. And then the Hong Kong opportunity arose unexpectedly and, in addition to the excitement of the trip, I suddenly realized that I would be able to fill in the gap. But even that was a tad uncertain because the initial flight from Newark went over the North Pole, which left me with the feeling that I had potentially only achieved the goal in the spirit if not the letter of the law. However, on the way back we flew directly east on the way to Chicago so there are no doubts. Not bad for a "reasonably intelligent young man of Hoosier bourgeois stock" (one of my first teaching evaluation comments from a professor in graduate school).
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| The sixteen hour flight from Newark seemed to be moving this fast. The shot was taken from Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park looking across Victoria Harbor towards Kowloon. |
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