Proving Geometry Wrong

Current position: 70 deg. 58'.31N 138 deg. 40'.81W. Now I was always taught that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It always made sense and I never had any reason to doubt it. I have now learned that like all rules, there is an exception to this one as well. As we left Amundsen Gulf and entered the Beaufort Sea we started heading in a straight line on our chart plotting software, almost due west, towards Point Barrow at the top of Alaska. After a little while we plugged in a way point off of Point Barrow to make it easier to see our course. It turns out that the shortest distance for us to get to Point Barrow is actually an arc to the North. We are still so high up on the globe that the shorter distance is more over the top, but of course you can't see that on a flat chart. I have another point to bring up about being so far on top of the globe as well. Yesterday we had a southerly breeze that seemed so warm (11-12 deg C) and I started to say "oh well that makes sense, southerly breeze off the land should be warmer..." What's south of us is Northern Canada and Alaska...somehow it's still hard to accept that fact. But now we are in a 20-25 kt Northerly that's coming off the Polar Icecap and it's back down to around 5 deg. C so I guess everything has to be taken in perspective. Right now we are 21 miles from the Alaska/Canadian line doing about 7 kts so by the end of my watch we will be back in the good ol' US of A! It'll be good to be back in America for a bit. In a copy of Time Magazine that one of Hans' friends left on the boat there was a little blip about the Walmart on Kodiak Island...I wonder if I can get a dunkin donuts iced coffee and a big mac when we get to Dutch Harbor? I probably shouldn't joke about that because I probably can.