Day 7: Up in the Air, Sky-High, Sky-High

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I was allowed, and indeed encouraged, to board early, and the attendant fussed over my oxygen connection. I noticed that he was often consulting the manual; I may have been his first supplemental-oxygen passenger. I was assured that if the POC proved insufficient for my needs Air New Zealand would supply pure medical oxygen if I told the crew I was in distress.

For the first time ever, I had a really comfortable flight. I definitely needed two seats; I checked and there is no way I could have fitted into one. I don't think I could have if I were a hundred pounds lighter, either. Maybe if I were still 180 lbs, I might have squeezed in.

But two seats were far more than enough room, as I only overlapped my seat by a few inches, and in fact I had *three* seats as they were kind enough to leave the third of the seats on my row vacant.

The size of the restrooms on Amtrak may be gauged by the fact that when I saw the plane's restrooms I was amazed and relieved by their size. There were four of them in my section, and all were large enough to let me turn around in front of the commode. With Amtrak, I had to back in.

We had two meals onboard, a very late supper and a breakfast. Both were very good for airplane meals.
The evening meal was baked chicken, green beans, and a fruit cup; breakfast was scrambled eggs, stewed tomatoes (how British!) and another fruit cup.

Each passenger had a small entertainment screen, set into the back of the seat in front of them, which could be controlled by a remote control. The remote control popped out of the armrest, which was a great relief to me -- I had never been able to use armrest controls before, as my hips were always wedged so tightly into the seat that any controls were beyond my reach.

I spent most of the flight looking at what they called the Airshow -- a simulated airplane flying across a simulated ocean, with points of interest marked. Besides the basic GPS-type view there was a simulated 3-D one "as seen from the cockpit," and a run-through of the entire trip, showing where we would be at each hour of the flight. Airspeed, groundspeed, altitude and outside temperature were constantly shown.

Movies, music videos, TV shows, albums and audiobooks were also available, as well as a few casual videogames. I tried a couple of the video games, but I had trouble using the remote control as a gamepad, so I gave up. I listened to a few music tracks, and began listening to a performance of "Romeo and Juliet," but my interest soon waned.

I watched "Citizen Kane" all the way through, and
made a quickly-abandoned effort to watch "2001: A Space Odyssey" as well. I know the plots of both of them, but until now I'd never seen them.

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