On February 28th I will board Continental Flight 89 from Newark to Beijing ( EWR-PEK) . The 7000 mile flight takes almost 14 hours. I’ll leave at 12:15 PM on Sunday and land at 3:00 PM on Monday March 1st. The flight trajectory takes us up over the Hudson Valley, then Quebec,Hudson’s Bay, Nunavut and Baffin Land,before heading across the Arctic Ocean. The plane will come within 200 miles of the North Pole. From there ,North becomes South and we spend several hours crossing Siberia , then into Manchuria and finally into Beijing. Because the Equinox will be approaching,the flight will take place mostly in daylight or twilight,with a good possibility of encountering the Aurora Borealis.