It’s currently 8:19 pm Austin time, 6:19 pm San Francisco time, and I haven’t got the foggiest idea what time it is in Korea because, as far as I can tell, we’re never actually going to get there.
I’ve been on long flights before, but it never ceases to amaze me how you can zonk out for what feels like hours, have vivid dreams (in my case, accompanied by equally vivid cursing people out–out loud–to the consternation of both my boyfriend and the other passengers, and wake up to discover you’ve been out for about thirty minutes. Ugh.
It has been a long, exhausting couple of days. On Saturday night (jeez, was that only two days ago?), Rodney had us over for a make your own pizza night. We’ve done these in the past; they’re kind of fun. He gets dough from a local Italian restaurant and then everyone gets to make up their own toppings. It’s a nice idea in theory, however, between the overconsumption of pizza with odd and conflicting toppings and my nerves about the trip (yes, I get a little anxious before travel, especially to new parts of the world where I don’t even know how to say “yes” or “no”), I was up half the night. Had my digestive system been an airplane, the flight attendants would have been on the PA making the announcement to “please exit the aircraft through the nearest door.” That started around 2 in the morning and continued in fits and spurts (no pun intended, although perfectly applicable) until around 9.
The panic attack happened around 10 when I began contemplating what would happen if I hadn’t recovered enough to make the trip. Between the, “what if I can’t fly tomorrow because I’m still too sick?” and “dear God what is wrong with me that I’m stressing this much about this trip,” well … I’ve had panic attacks before, and I’ve heard said that people have confused them with heart attacks. This was the first time I ever had one of those kinds of panic attacks. Fortunately, I knew what was happening and was able to take measures accordingly without involving a trip to the emergency room or somesuch. It did, however, involve me sleeping a good chunk of the early afternoon.
Anyway, where this is all going is that it was mid-afternoon before either myself or Ray was ready to begin packing. As the luggage is in the cargo hold, I’m still not convinced we didn’t forget … many things, but we seem to have done all right with the carry ons.
Mom and Dad came to pick us up at 5:30 in the morning — which, because it’s my parents, meant that they came at 5:20. I had these grandiose visions of taking all sorts of artistic shots of the luggage and the tickets splayed out along with out passports and … yeah, no. Flying the first Monday morning — the first work day — after New Year’s is ridiculous. We got to the airport in Austin, and thank God that Dad has earned elite status with United Airlines because if we’d had to go through the main check in line, we might, in fact, still be waiting. The line for security — all three of them — were wrapped around the terminal. By the time we got through security, we stopped-by mutual agreement-long enough to pick up something to eat since none of us had had breakfast, and walked right on the airplane.
Three and a half hours later we were in gray, rainy San Francisco, where we had the fun and excitement of a four hour layover that involved repeated walks up and down the G concourse, where there isn’t much in the way of food that’s inexpensive or particularly fast.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we boarded this here Boeing triple-7 that, according to the Airshow program on my little foldout screen, is currently at 35,000 feet, traveling around 500 miles per hour on a west northwest heading over the Pacific Ocean a good distance south of the Aleutian islands. We’re not even halfway there yet – Korea (nor Japan) hasn’t even come into view on the screen.
I know the best thing for it is to just sit here and tune out everything, and accept that we’ll get there at some point, but there’s no rush. My limit on being able to sit still the entire flight, though, is right around 9-10 hours. This one’s scheduled at 12 and a half.
I wonder if I can score another glass of water off the flight attendant.
Next post from Korea, or bust!
