Day 13: Travel Day - Vancouver to Denver

Nau maiYesterday we completed the second part of our journey to the United States of America. It’s usually best to try and ignore the timezone change for this kind of journey but this late afternoon flight had the potential to really mess you up. We would take off from Narita at 4:30pm and after nine hours in the air we would land in Vancouver at a 9:30am that would feel like 1am. A lifetime in the elite forces had given me the ability to fall asleep on command and so I used this invaluable skill, closing my eyes the second I sat down on the plane and forcing myself straight into deep REM cycles seven hours before my normal bedtime. Our aircraft touched down into a fresh Vancouver morning and I instantly woke up feeling perfectly refreshed. We disembarked and went through a frustrating transit security checkpoint where a vengeful air transport security officer threw away most of the contents of Liz’s toilet bag, despite them having traveled safely on the many other aeroplanes of this…