North Pole

Captain's Log Approximate Skydate 1/21/08

I don't know what time or date it is where I am right now and am wondering how time zones work here. I am about 37,000 feet almost directly above the north pole. I have been travelling for 16 hours and still have at least 11 more to go. The time of year, location, and height make it somehow possible for the outside air temperature to be -86F. It's too bad that I won't have an opportunity to take a photo in the daylight because this will be one long night here (it will still be night here even through my return flight in five weeks from now.). Nonetheless, it is a bright full moon and crystal clear skies for an unobstructed aerial view of the ice below. There is an incredible, expanse of mountains everywhere in every direction as far as the eye can see. It is as if billions of tremendous (2000 feet tall maybe. I have no frame of reference.) ice bergs were froze in place to be drifted with snow and weathered into mountains. There are also vast plains (maybe 50 miles across and hundreds long) between groups of mountains like great flood plains of rivers.. but rising sea water instead of rivers. These plains would be the only reasonable passage on ground. The mountains eventually give way to an abyss of flat, fractured ice. This is how I have always imagined the Arctic.. not the mountains, the abyss.
I am bound for Hong Kong from the US Statue of Liberty, over Greenland, the North Pole and the Arctic Circle, Siberia, and the thick of mainland Asia.. 100 pages into "Xenocide" and have plenty of time to read.