The Jon Blog

20 Hours of Boeing

I'm in Asia!!!

Yes, that's right, I spent about 20 hours on Boeing 747's. The worst hour, truthfully, was the hour we spent being delayed at JFK: they had loaded too much fuel into the wings, and it expanded in the heat, causing the wings to "drop." So they had to transfer the fuel to the fuselage or something like this. Bear in mind that Boeing 747's do not have very functional air conditioning when they're parked at the gate. So it was starting to get real hot there in that cabin.

We finally took off at 4pm Tuesday, NYC time. And the flight wasn't too bad. The Ambien didn't pack the punch it should have, though, and I spent a little more time being awake than I'd hoped. When we got to Tokyo (12 hours and 50 minutes of flying, approximately), we had to go through security -- not passport control, which I thought was kind of strange. I mean, we'd only just gotten off a plane, what could we have gotten ahold of that hadn't been allowed on the first flight? But it was not nearly as personally invasive as the security at JFK. They made me lift my shirt up to check out my nipple ring. And he patted down my crotch. "With the back of my hand," Mr. Security Guard made a point of showing me. Kinky, no? But noone questioned my knitting needles at all...

Anyhow, a short layover in Tokyo and onto the next 747 for the just-under-6-hour flight to Bangkok. On that flight, though, I was stuck next to one of those travellers that you hate to have to sit next to: ugly, stupid American who just wants to chat chat chat. I made a point of showing him that I was putting in earplugs, hoping he'd get the "leave me alone" hint, but he didn't quite take it. And the movie had to be fucking "Maid in Manhattan" with nasty skanky JLo. (I hate her, which is neither here nor there, but it made the movie unwatchable. I dozed through whatever the movies on the first flight were). So we landed in Tokyo at 11pm Wednesday, local time, and it's now 1am here. 11 hours ahead of home.

The hotel I'm staying in is lovely, and I can't wait for my room service dinner to arrive so that I can eat, then go to bed, and get up and explore tomorrow! See if Bang Cock really lives up to its name...

Posted by Jon at July 2, 2003 02:10 PM | TrackBack