Day 2 - July 19, 2001
MacWorld & NY to Joburg (Part 1)

Waking up a little later then I had hoped for I got started on day 2 of our great journey. I was scheduled to spend the morning at MacWorld 2001 NY while Sara enjoyed shopping. Of the two of us Sara probably had the better day. I had two specific goals for my short time at MacWorld; 1) Get literature on production tools for my Zimbabwe contacts, 2) See what’s new and exciting. Since I had been to MacWorld SF earlier in the year I had some experience with these events and looked forward to traversing the floor. After a short time on the floor my mood quickly changed though. My first stops included Apple Computer and Canon to pick up product literature for Zimbabwe. I hadn’t received a response to my written requests so this was my last chance to pick up anything. Canon and Apple flatly turned me down saying they had nothing. To say the least I was quite disappointed with both of these companies. I was able to get a few things from other companies but these were small bits that didn’t matter all that much to me. In terms of new items that caught my eye, I didn’t see much. The one plus of the conference though was the ability to get on-line. Wireless network was in full force on the floor so it was easy to get on-line. The only hard part was picking the right network of the 10 wireless networks available. After doing a last e-mail check from the floor I decided to head back to the apartment and get ready to brave the subway and JFK again.

The trip back to terminal 3 went a bit better than the previous day’s journey. During the trip I heard about Sara’s day that involved walking 5th avenue, buying a watch, and seeing Brook Shields. We picked up our bags, checked in, got a small snack, and waited to board the plane. Today’s jet would be a 747-400 painted in the South African Airlines color scheme. As 6 o’clock, the departure time, approached we boarded and found our seats in the 747’s bubble. For anyone who has not been in the bubble it is an interesting place. At the very front is the door to the cockpit, followed by a number of rows in a 3-3 configuration, and finally in the rear is the stairwell, galley, and lavatories. It’s a nice a quaint setup especially when compared to seating in other parts of the plane. 6 o’clock quickly past and we were still sitting at the gate. Luckily, we had an amazing captain who decided to entertain and give updates during the delay. He explained the reason for our delay, the ground brought the wrong push followed by an airplane parked behind us, and interspersed this with information from the “golly gee wiz” department about the airplane. This information varied from the details of why the dog that was traveling in cargo will have a good flight to how much fuel luckily isn’t being charged to his credit card. After an hour we finally pushed back and were off to Joburg.

Dinner was served shortly after take off and was quite good. After dinner I tried to fall asleep in hopes of beating jet lag. However, planes are not really designed for people that are tall. I found it almost impossible to find a comfortable position to sleep in during the beginning of the flight. After many failed attempts I finally was able to get comfortable extending the top of my seat using a little creativity and a blanket.