Today is the day; the start of our journey is finally here. Buzz, buzz, buzz; my alarm goes off and I jump up in a panic. Like a child on Christmas morning, I’m filled with excitement accompanied by both anxiety and joy. I go through my checklist one last time before moving my luggage outside. Cliff and his wife show up a few minutes early but I’m already outside waiting.
We arrive at the airport early to check in. I didn’t realize the 50-pound luggage rule; I’m hoping that my bag will check in without a hitch. Fingers crossed and eyes closed, I put my bag on the scale and to my surprise it was under the allowed weight. With that out of the way, all we had to do was sit and wait for the other team members to arrive before we moved to our private conference room in the USAir members only club.
Time passes, and it’s time for us to board our first plane on this three-plane journey. Our first flight, to Detroit, went off without any problems. We boarded the plane and made our way to our assigned seats. While waiting in line to go to my seat (11E) I notice that I have a middle seat. I start to pray that I do not have to sit between two large people. But what do you know--I had to sit between two large people. With no arm room on either side, I contemplated the new rules for larger people. At first, I did not mind giving up my two arms rests but as the flight continued I began to grow a little annoyed at the rudeness of my armrest partners. Sitting there quietly reading “No Impact Man” I tried to ignore the inconvenience forced upon me. I got to a part of the book where the author, Colin Beavan, speaks about how we are people of convenience and in order to be happy we have to let go of that convenience and live our own lives. I continued reading until we landed in Detroit.
Once in Detroit, we had about 20 minutes until our connector flight took off. This flight would take us from Detroit to Japan. Before boarding the plane, Lew, Ben, and I decided to get cheeseburgers and french fries as one last “American” meal. Who knows when we will see a cheeseburger again? Chowing down on our American diets, we board the plan and again find our seats. Due to some techniqual problems, our flight was delayed as we sat on the plane. I’m not exactly sure how long our delay was, I dozed off for the entirety of the delay, upon waking up, we were ready to take off. Second in line, the pilot announces as we start backing up. Lights flicker, video screens come on, and we are airborne once again. It has now been a few hours on this leg of the trip and we already had a good meal and a glass of wine.
At the present we are flying over Canada. The flight will fly us over Canada, over Alaska, to the east coast of Russia, then down to Japan. In all, this portion of the flight is a total of 12 hours. Looking at the information screen located at the front of the cabin, it is -54 degrees F outside. Once we land in Japan, we will be able to stretch our legs for a hot second before boarding one more time for our final destination.
There is now an in-flight movie playing; I’m going to check this out, because it looks pretty awesome. It’s appears to be a clay-mation film staring two foxes who are up to no good. How can you trust a fox that dresses in a suit?
To be continued…
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