From Russia, with love

Now the sun's coming up over Russia. Besides the lack of technology, this missing shortcut is why I couldn't fly straight to China on my last visit in 1986. I ran a cross-country race in Guangzhou, China. To get there we flew south from Medford, OR, to L.A. to Anchorage to Seoul to Hong Kong. From there we took a train to Guangzhou. Back then this picture would have been the product of high altitude espionage over Soviet air space. Now their generous use of their sky is shaving hours and hours off our travel time. Now it only takes 15.