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Reflections on a Wandering Life.....

Monday, March 03, 2008

China Clipper Air Service 

Stopped by the Ganges in Wudaokou this evening. It's partly the lamb curry--very tasty. But the real treat is the rice pudding. I got addicted to that stuff when I was a kid. It was a two-and-a-half week stint on the "Himalaya," one of the ships of the old P&O line. It wasn't my first trans-pacific cruise--I had done it four years earlier, when I was three. But I don't remember that trip very well. In fact, the only part I really remember is getting off the ship in Seattle. But the Himalaya I do remember. I was seven by that time, and strong impressions tend to stick at that age. The Himalaya was a British ocean liner, but most of the crew were from India. Funny how something like eating rice pudding in the dining room of a mid-century steamer can stay in your mind through all the changes of life. The video below features the old China Clipper playing hopscotch across the pacific. That video actually predates my transoceanic cruises by a couple decades. But it was special, not regular, transportation. Regular flights across the Pacific didn't become a standard until the mid-sixties, for one important reason: You can't really have regular transportation across the ocean with propeller-driven craft. That's why I have always said that the jetliner is the most significant technological development since the industrial revolution. The ability to take whole boatloads of people, throw them up in the air, and move them across the face of the planet at horrific speeds has made the world a smaller place, quite literally.

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