London to San Francisco

What a great start to the day: an 'eat as much as you like breakfast' - just the thing I needed to see me through a 32 hour day!  I was grateful that Virgin-Atlantic had re-arranged the departure times to leave 2 hours later.  It meant a much more relaxed start to the day.  I caught the coach to the airport at just after 10 am and I was through to the departure lounge 45 minutes later.  My video camera seems to attract a lot of attention from the airport security people - it's now the third time they've checked it for explosives!
Just before our flight was due to push back from the terminal building, this announcement was made by one of the crew: "Is there an engineer on board; if so can they make themselves known at the flight deck?"  That made the passengers feel really confident!  We were never informed as to the reason for the announcement as we were soon taxiing out to the runway, but at at the pace of an arthritic snail due to the number of flights waiting to take off.
Our flight headed up towards Scotland and then across the Atlantic by way of Iceland and the southern tip of Greenland.  After making landfall over Canada we flew over the Laurentian Plateau before crossing into US airspace over Minnesota.  South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada were next before we crossed into California near Truckee.  One thing that struck me as we flew over the more western states was how barren it was.  Vast tracts of desert with the occasional strip of agricultural land.  Another thing that occured to me was that it must have been very difficult for those men who surveyed and built the first railroads to cross the US towards the Pacific Ocean.  Most of the mountain ranges run north to south, with rivers etched into them on a east to west basis.  The railroads would have to follow the rivers through the mountains which often meant slow, winding tracks.
Finally, we touched down at San Franciscco airport where the temperature was a comfortable 79F; so different from Edinburgh!