String Of Butterflies: October and Business Class

Welcome to November! The past month has been slow and busy at the same time. Mostly I've been saving money by not traveling Europe, and been on a walking challenge all month. With today as the final day of the work walking challenge, I have walked 433 miles since the beginning of the month, I had the Europe advantage of walking virtually everywhere. Since this is a 2 person team challenge and we are competing across the entire company, we are currently in the lead with over 1.7 million steps between the two of us (this number will probably greatly change by the end of the day) with a current total of 860 miles. Cheers to walking between 4 floors of lab space, dancing in the flat, and all the other things I did (including hitting the gym when in Phoenix to compensate for not having the European advantage then) to try to move as much as possible. I only had 2-3 really lazy days while visiting family. The rest of the time I moved- even walking up and down Heathrow airport to get more steps in.

When I wasn't in Bonn, I was traveling back to Phoenix (and working all week) or making a quick visit to San Diego to see the family. It was crazy busy, but lots of fun seeing friends and family before the holiday craziness begins. Just 24 days of work left this year :) How awesome is that? On top of that, my time out here was extended for another year... wooooohoooo!

One of the questions I've had is what is it like flying business class. 1) I have no idea how I'll go back to flying coach for long-hauls after this international work. 2) Even though the plane is an older Boeing 747-400 model, the space in business class is still something I'm grateful for, lie flat seats? Not being squished in like a sushi roll, yeah I won't complain about being booked into business class (especially when I was expecting to be flown in coach). 3) I've now become a mileage whore, in the best possible way that is (hey, if I'm flying for business, you bet I'm collecting those miles for a 'free' flight somewhere). Some unexpected tidbits from flying this British Airways route: Phoenix's business class lounge is oooookkkkk, but it is nothing like what Heathrow has. The vegetarian options on the standard business class menu are 20x better than requesting a special vegetarian meal (not to mention the desserts alone are 50x better- special request vegetarian=fruit, not the delicious other options). One of my early trips, they accidentally put me on the upper deck and they were so apologetic about it, but they did me a favor! Flying the upper deck of the 747 is so much quieter than the main deck, so much so when on this last flight when I didn't have a reservation for the upper deck, I went out of my way to check daily for when a seat opened up on that deck (and I scored one!). Melatonin helps a ton trying to sleep on a long-haul, I'd been using it all week, so by the time the flight came around, I was on a good schedule to help knock me out. This was only the 2nd time I've ever been able to sleep any little bit on a long-haul of the 10+ that I've taken. So much so this time with the melatonin, that I slept through take off (I remember taxiing to the runway, but was out by take off), and had to struggle to stay awake through meal service. Flight attendants on the upper deck tend to be less stressed than their downstairs partners, probably because they have less people to attend to. I could go on and on about the upper deck, but there's more space, it's a 2/2 split, the aisle is huge, there are 2 lavatories for 20 seats (the ratio is worse for the main deck). You can sleep and not be bumped by others, my favorite seat is 64A (bulkhead, no climbing over anyone to get out when I need to walk around), you have room to walk around, and you're more likely to get the meal option you want. The movies and other entertainment options are no better in business class, in fact BA has some of the worst that I've come across and I've flown Delta, Air New Zealand, and US Airways long haul, and they've all had better in-flight entertainment (except for the one Delta one that only had the aisle monitor- stupid move Delta!). Air New Zealand will always take the cake when it comes to safety briefing videos. I also just started flying on the way back into Dusseldorf from London, and the food service was delicious, warm scones with clotted cream? Yes, please! One last tip- just keep hydrated on flights, I can't emphasize that enough, even if it means you have to make a few trips later.....Now, onto the badly taken pictures: