I had the opportunity to take a test flight yesterday on Emirates’ sparkling new double-decker Airbus 380, one of the world’s largest planes. The plane flew a jug-shaped loop around LAX, mostly over Catalina and the Channel Islands, while the 250 of us aboard –including astronaut Buzz Aldrin — got to play with the cool stuff inside.

It’s a very very big airplane and after waiting for a couple hours for it to arrive from San Francisco at our little private runway at LAX, they let us climb onboard.

The plane has everything: wireless internet, 1200 video channels, games you can play with other passengers via your console and live cameras from the tail, wing and underside that let you see where you’re flying. Watching it, you feel disembodied from the experience, especially since the plane is so quiet, but it’s a cool feature. Here’s a little video of what that looks like: Airbus Navigation Screen

Once we reached cruising altitude, the captain said we could walk around, asking that we not stay in one place longer than 15 minutes. As we filed up the spiral staircase in the rear, the crew was handing out glasses of Dom Perignon.

We were pretty hungry, though, and I made the mistake of reaching for some of this sushi when I got to the upstairs bar. Someone very forcefully said, “Sir, that is only for display. It’s been sitting around since yesterday.” I hate display sushi.

But I love the weird business class “shanty town” just beyond the bar.

It’s a very strange visual — little cubbies with chairs that flip back electronically into flat beds. There are flat screens, too, and holders for all sorts of drinks. I’d be fine flying to Dubai in one of these.

Then again, there’s first class. Fourteen private wood-paneled cabins, each with a stocked fridge, a basket of food. I stole a Hershey bar and a copy of Harvard Business Review. The big draw, though, is the shower. Yes, shower.

You book it for 20 minutes and inside there’s a heated floor, shampoos and other products and the full-sized shower itself. The plane carries only an extra 130 gallons of water which means the showers can only last five minutes. All that for $14,000 a seat.

After about two hours, we arrived back at LAX where they gave us a swag bag with things like a tiny model of the planet in a black velvet box. I would have preferred a voucher for a free round trip ticket somewhere.

I asked members of Upod, the group I run for professional writers and editors, to send links to their blogs and websites and send they did. If you take a look here, you’ll see how talented and productive a community it is. Among the many, many (which represents only about a tenth of the total Upod community), there are writing vodka makers, vodka-drinking taste makers, thrillists, banterists and someone who ambushes the unfashionable in Central Park. As we say in the group, In Pod We Trust.