Great Circle Mapper –
copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
Eugene, Portland, Vancouver… familiar names. Then names on the tracking screen on the seat in front of us are increasingly unknown: Yellow Knife, Adak, Resolute Bay, Nori’lsk (second largest city above the arctic circle), down midway between Beijing and Moscow, Surgut, Omsk, over Isfahan and the Arabian Peninsula, twelve time zones from Pacific Standard Time to Dubai in the Emirates.
Simple course really: due north from San Francisco to the north pole, tap the auto compass lightly on the side, then due south over Russia and Iran to the middle east, 8103 miles from the starting point.
“We pray for one last landing,
On the globe that gave us birth,
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies,
And the cool green hills of earth.”
Every trip begins with packing and is an exercise in reducing this:
Into this:
That’s it for two months including sleeping bags and way too much food…
We zipped south in our deep cherry pearl XXBOXX past Mt. Shasta with as little snow on its 4322 meter slopes as possible.
The reservoir is nearing empty.
At SFO we found ourselves waiting for the afternoon flight to Dubai on this plane
Up next – Dubai
Oregon Budget Traveler 
Looks like a picture is missing…I get a “file not found” on the top photo…geez…I really thought being a sw engineer you would test your work 😉
That was a map which I’ve reinserted. No idea where it went but the great circle route SFO->Dubai is back. Hope it stays there! Just gone out and made a Paypal donation to Great Circle Mapper and found that it had been improved with the endpoints now identified. Changed the map and struggled a bit before (I think) putting this puppy to bed!
Fun collection. I cannot believe you have food and bedding in those backpacks! More more more. Thanks, Terry. Jan
AND even thought you said I can ask to not have my photo posted, my photo is not posted.
Yes, Graham. If only I had a photo of you, I would not post it w/o your permission. Why don’t you send me a photo of yourself in a something Arabic or African and ask that I not post it?
So far, excitement, the map did not show, Shasta and Lake Shast look to prove global warming, and someone is looking to kidnap Chiyemi