Québec – Nantucket
The flight preparation and the actual take-off from Québec takes place in heavy morning rain. I climb above the clouds and continue my flight further up the St. Lawrence River, where the clouds recede. I fly over the city of Montreal, the second largest city in Canada and the fourth largest francophone city in the world. Out the window I can see the Montreal Biodome, a building converted from the Olympic Cycling Oval that now allows visitors to walk through replicas of the four American ecosystems. Next to it, are the Olympic Stadium and the Montreal Botanical Garden. Next, I observe Mount Royal Cross rising above downtown and the experimental Habitat 67 building. Crossing the US border, I take a slight detour to Mount Washington. Despite its not-quite-highest altitude (1,917 m), it is famous for its extremely harsh climate; in 1934, the highest wind speed ever measured in the northern hemisphere was 372 kilometres per hour. Its summit has a polar climate and in 1885 a record temperature of -46 °C was measured here. During my flight, the conditions are calm in the surrounding area, allowing me to see both the mountain and the large identically named resort below. The route then passes through Boston, a city of 7.5 million people and one of the oldest and most culturally important cities in the United States. I end the flight by landing on Nantucket Island, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the world’s centre of whale hunting and whale processing.
- Distance: 835.3 km
- Total distance: 9,360.9 km
- Flight time: 2 hours 50 minutes
- Total flight time: 34 hours
