otoh

From my notes on Tuesday:

I slept very little last night — no more than a couple hours. After tossing and turning I got up a little earlier than I had planned. Better to be early than to sleep through the alarm and miss my flight. I left my house at about 3:50 AM. There is very little traffic this early. [Where the hell are these people going?] I get quickly through the off-site parking, check-in, and security and am at the gate just after 5:00. My flight leaves at 7:00.

I sit and read a little, but my eyes are starting to droop. All I need is to fall asleep now and miss my flight — that would be great! The coffee shop wasn’t open when I arrived, but I make the short trek back up the concourse now. Good. It’s open. I just get settled back in my chair when I think I should be taking notes. Dammit — I intended to bring a small notebook with me so I could jot things down during the day and type them in here at night. Oh, well. Since I worked off a mental list, if this is the only thing I’ve forgotten I’ll be doing quite well.

I walk back up the concourse to the newsstand. Maybe they have notebooks. No such luck. Then I remember: I bought a Korean phrase book and it has a few blank pages in the back for taking notes. That will do until I get in country. I sip the coffee and wait for boarding. I’m in the last group. Even when I’m not in the last group I sometimes wait till they are called before I get on. I’m going to be sitting for hours in a seat I know will be cramped and uncomfortable. Why would I want to do that any longer than necessary?

The first leg of my journey — wait… is the first leg the first flight or was the first leg from my house to the airport? Or from my house to the Park & Fly? My first flight is from Orlando to Chicago. It’s pretty uneventful — most of the trip everyone is too tired to be causing problems. I’m seated in the middle of a large family returning home from their Central Florida vacation. The kids are kind of squirmy the last half-hour or so, but there are no big problems.

News from the Windy City Blows:

Inside the Chicago terminal I look for the gate number for my connecting flight. Then I look for the gate for a flight arriving from Louisville. My sister and [ex]brother-in-law (sis&xbil) are flying out of Louisville and we travel the rest of the way together. I should have about an hour till they get in and then a couple more hours before we fly out. All of the screens show only departing flights in the first three places I look. I find a customer service area and ask what gate the flight from Louisville is coming in on.

I start walking to their gate on the next concourse. I pass another bank of screens and this one has both arriving and departing flights. I do a quick double-check of the gate the agent gave me… and it says the flight is canceled. Uh-oh. I turn on my cell phone. There’s a message waiting. Their flight has indeed been canceled. [DAMN!] I call them back. The plane that sis&xbil were supposed to be on was hit by lightning on it’s way into Louisville. The airline in their infinite wisdom is not sending another plane. Everyone is in a long line waiting to be rescheduled onto another flight. At this point, it’s likely that they won’t fly out until tomorrow.

The gate area is hot and crowded so I walk up and down the concourse a couple times. I munch on some organic trail mix [good for me!] and some macadamia nut cookies [just really good....]. I know this news is not tragic, but it does put a crimp into the plans we had. And it means I’ll be navigating the airports in Japan and Korea alone. I’m not afraid to travel alone, but this is a long way to go into areas with very unfamiliar languages. But it’s all part of the adventure….

Up and Over:

I call again just before boarding. Sis&xbil are still in a line at the Louisville airport. They think they can get on a flight at 6:00 AM the next morning. My nephew knows that I’ll be arriving alone. So off I go. The flight from Chicago to Tokyo is on a 777. They have a small video screen for each seat and each person can tune in to a selection of video entertainment. One of the choices is a map that shows the position and progress of the flight we are on. South Korea is at about the same latitude as Northern Georgia. [Oh yeah. The 38th parallel is rather important in Korean geography, in fact....] So from Chicago it seems like it would make sense to go WSW. Instead we start out WNW toward Edmonton, CA, past Juneau, Alaska, over the Bering Sea, and then SW [in very general terms]. I didn’t ask, but I assume this is so we don’t spend a long time over open water in the Pacific. It also takes us around what are probably very busy traffic lanes in and around Seattle.

I catch parts of a few movies and even manage to snooze a little bit. I have to be pretty much exhausted to sleep in a plane — and I am. The map flashes progress in miles and amount of time traveled with our ETA in local time. But we are crossing several time zones and the International Date Line in there somewhere. We are a little ahead of schedule so the flight that was scheduled to last 13 hours comes in just a little under 12 hours. I get really disoriented about time. When I land in Japan it is about 23 hours after I left my house. That was at about 4:00 AM Tuesday. But here it’s about 3:00 PM Wednesday. The flight for Korea leaves at 6:00 PM. Hurry up and wait….

Things to do in Tokyo When You’re Dead Tired:

Even though it is the same flight number from Chicago to Tokyo and Tokyo to Korea, it is not the same plane. We have to go through another security checkpoint, but not through Customs. I find the gate easily enough and then I walk the length of the concourse a couple times. I’m achy and tired, but not really sleepy. I ate on the plane so I’m not really hungry. But then I notice. Almost right next to my gate. This is what I must do. I had forgotten all about it, but it had occurred to me while planning that this might be the quintessential time killer here. I can now honestly say that I have eaten sushi in Japan. No one really needs to know that it was carry-out while in the airport….

Last Leg(s):

The last flight goes well. Even with a delay before take-off (about 40 minutes from when we pulled away from the gate until we actually left the ground) we get in a little early. Traveling from the USA for a short vacation does not require a visa, but I have to dig through my bag for my nephew’s phone number since I have no idea of the address where I’ll be staying. I wait for my bag to come through. [I don't think my bags have ever been near the first ones off in any of the trips I've taken anywhere.] Since I have nothing to declare, I breeze through customs. Although if I had been more alert, I could have been filling out that form while I was waiting for my bag….

My nephew is there waiting for me. I say hello in Korean and at that point have gone through almost all my knowledge of the Korean language. If I didn’t have him here to rely on I would have made more of an effort to learn some words and phrases before the trip. He is my crutch. He says it’s okay. I flew into the Incheon airport which is about a 40 minute bus ride from his house. Then it’s a five minute walk from the bus stop. It’s about 11:00 PM local time. My body has no idea what time [or day] it is. But we sit around and chat for a while. Sometime around 1:30 AM I’m fading fast.

Good night [or morning or whatever]…..