This is the Shanghai Magnetic Levitation (Maglev to his friends) Train which we took from Pudong Airport to the station near our hotel. In a little over seven minutes we reached the world record (until last week in Japan!) speed of 431 km/h which is right around 268 mph. We flew!!!!!!!!!!! Actually we reached capacity speed in 2 minutes and didn't get to fly too long before we needed to decelerate. Those tricky Japanese got theirs up to 676 km/h. How did it feel, Mad, you ask? Blurry and a titch nausating. Rumor has it that it won't be long until Maglev takes on the 800 mile trip to Beijing. That presents all manner of engineering challenges, but at least it would alleviate the crying babies, loud-talking Chinese mothers, snoring seatmates, and nervous leg NONSTOP ANNOYANCES which we endured coming home on a regular fancy dancy old bullet train from Shanghai for a little under five hours, thank you. I'm going to catch this blog up tomorrow. Come back.
