Shaking and moving

I arrived back from Boston yesterday morning in record time. An unseasonally strong jet-stream whisked my plane across the Atlantic in less than 5 hours, 15 minutes. At one point the inflight route map reported a tail wind of 223 km/h (138mph), while our relative ground speed topped a staggering 1102km/h. Another personal speed record.

Of course the winds play havoc with flight schedules when travelling in the opposite direction. The flight home was half an hour late departing. Apparently the opposing jetstream had dramatically extended the plane's earlier flight time from Heathrow to Boston.

As you can imagine, blustery winds have been the order of the day this weekend. I'm beginning to suspect a seasonal pattern as we experienced weeks of gales around the same period last year. However, Garry's big news story this week was London's earthquake. On Wednesday a 5.2 magnitude quake struck the city about 1:00am. Garry was preparing for bed. He simply thought that wind was shaking the house more violently than usual. This was his first earthquake.

I can recall two earthquakes over the years. The first took place when I was about eight years old. I recall a loud rumbling sound followed by the entire house shaking wildly. Within seconds, my parents had raced down the hall, plucked me from my bed and had us all standing under a door frame. The second strong quake I recall happened while I was in Tokyo. It caused my hotel room to sway noticably. A rather unnerving experience.