So Far, So Good

It’s hard to imagine ten hours on a plane, but it’s also hard to imagine how a flight that long could be any more comfortable than the one we are on now from Portland to Tokyo. Well, I suppose business class would have been nice, but we sure can’t complain.

Our day started with dropping Jordan and Phillip off at school then going on straight to the Klamath Falls airport. You gotta love flying out of K Falls . . . We left our driveway at 7:50 and were through security by 8:30 and on the plane by 9:00. Free parking, free wireless, nice people working for Horizon and TSA.

The flight to Portland was, as far as I could tell, smooth and easy. It wasn’t until we were walking through PDX that I learned Jeannette was feeling airsick. Needless to say, my assertion that the flight really wasn’t bumpy at all didn’t win me any brownie points with her. I kept any further commentary to myself.

In Portland we connected with Laura, grabbed some food at Wendy’s and hit our flight. We managed to rearrange our seating assignments so that all four of us were together. Jameson got the window seat but, other than a few minutes over Alaska, there wasn’t much to see except blinding sunlight. As I mentioned, it’s not a bad way to travel. Every seat has its own personal entertainment system with several dozen movies and TV shows, hundreds of music clips, games and more. Jamey and I watched Chicken Little—a somewhat odd little Disney movie—and Jeannette started off with Line of Fire. Jameson enjoyed being able to track our flight on an interactive map of the world. (At this moment we are at 40,199 feet altitude and have 854 miles to go to Narita International. Apparently we will land in one hour and 46 minutes, to be precise.)

About two-thirds of the way through the flight, we discovered that the woman sitting right behind Jeannette is also traveling to China for an adoption.

It’s hard to comprehend what we’re doing and the fact that in about eight hours we’ll be walking in China. I think that as we get close to landing in Beijing I’ll finally feel some jitters. So far, so good!

PS: I am sending this during our layover in Tokyo. Jamey finally fell asleep about 45 minutes before landing (or about 11 PM Oregon time). Now we're trying to keep him awake enough that he'll be able to sleep when we get to Beijing. It's gonna be a long day/night/whatever.