Seb's round-the-world tour: Crossing the Pacific: how I gained 1 day :)

When you do a round-the-world trip, crossing the Pacific is a dream. Or at least for me it was, as a European, or because it always looked crazy to me that you could reach those 2 extremities of the world-map in 1 flight.
Crossing the Atlantic has been a common trip for me in the last 10 years..., but flying over the Pacific has been an hypothetic move, which I wasn't supposed to do unless I would lived East of Asia or West of US and going to the other side.

With a RTW trip, clearly, you have to cross all oceans :-). So I was looking forward to this trip, even though it has been a long one as I was going from New-Zealand, back to Australia, followed by US/LA, then Panama... in total, 46h of trip for me, but only 26h for my watch. I gained 20h :-)

In details, it happened like this:
- left my Auckland hotel Monday June 17th, 7am
- after missing my 7:30am flight... (humm... yeah i was late, partied on Sunday night, hopefully I had put some buffer here), I grab the 9am flight
- flew for 3h... and landed in Sydney at 10am
- boarded the 747 plane at 1:30pm, to take-off at 2pm... but technical issues made us stay on the ground, in the heat, for 3h before to finally take-off at 5pm
- 13h flight... :-/
- landing in LA around noon, still Monday 17th!
- stayed 2h in the airport to solve administrative, travel issues
- went to the beach 7h
- back to check-in and wait at the lounge at 9pm, for 2h30
- board the plane at 11:30pm then take-off midnight
- land in Panama City at 8am after 5h of flight
- reach my friend's flat Tuesday June 18th, at 9am

Spending more than 16h in the same plane was quite "constraining", but I still liked this crossing experience, thinking/dreaming while I was sleeping that I was traveling in time. As I will not fly in the other direction and "lose" 1 day, I have really gained that day. If you look at me, think I am actually 1 day older than I am saying ;-))
Also, I wonder if we would keep flying a plane eastward, we could gain months, or even years I think... why has no one ever done that to travel in time?

Panama's Caribbean coast view before to land

The LA beach break
Otherwise, with a 12h break in LA airport... I grabbed a taxi to spend the afternoon on the beach. A bit costly for the round-trip ride, but so much better than waiting inside an old airport hall!!

I went to Manhattan beach pier, then walked to Hermosa beach, which looked nicer. As before, a lot of volley-ball courts and players, a lot of runners & walkers... the active & fit California I knew!