Not much to report, other than that a 13 hour flight feels very long. Both my flights were completely full and on time.  I had loads of time before my first flight to Vancouver, so wasn’t perturbed by the very slow hand inspection of my bike bag in Calgary.  The CATSA agent was very nice and helped me get everything repacked. Unlike the US, where the TSA opens bags in a back room, in Canada they let the passenger observe and pull things out of the bag.

I had a few hours wait in Vancouver and was sleepy by the time we departed for Taipei just after midnight. Boarding was very well organized, with each zone having its own queue. The avoided the usual wedge of humanity where people hang out in anticipation of their zone being called. An AirTag  in my bike bag let me know that my bike was onboard. Or more accurately, that it was very near the plane just before we took off. 

Flying with EVA Air in a Boeing 777 was as pleasant an experience as you can have in economy class, I’d say. Good food and friendly staff. And they don’t charge for bicycles, for anyone who is keeping track. But I checked in with Air Canada in Calgary, so they dinged me (first world troubles that I won’t whine about). There were no screaming babies - hurray for that. It was interesting to see our route that went up to Alaska and then apparently quite close to Russian airspace and then directly over Japan as we headed south. The flight was entirely in the dark, so I saw none of it. 

The nice fellow next to me was a Vancouverite of 20 years who was heading to his homeland of southern China for two months.  He explained to me how typing in Chinese works on a smartphone - users need to search for Chinese characters using pinyin. Kind of like how we search for emojis in English. He said that ‘Taipei’ requires two separate characters. He also said that the traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan aren’t all that different than the simplified Chinese used in mainland China. 

I slept for a few hours, but more on Vancouver time than Taipei time, so I wonder if I’ll be messed up for a while. 

It was a short day, hour wise, since I skipped ahead 16 hours, but it felt very long indeed. The fun starts tomorrow.