My China Odyssey

I have flown many times in my life, up and down the east coast as well as criss-crossing America. I’ve even flown to Europe and the Middle East, but none compare to the flight from the east coast of the United States to the People’s Republic of China. The short flight from North Carolina to New Jersey was a minor prelude for the nineteen plus hour flight that laid before me.

In Newark I boarded a Boeing 777 that was nearlyfilled to capacity. The passengers ranged in age from children, of two-three years to the elderly, of seventy plus years. Most appeared to be Chinese nationals returning home, while the others seemed to be tourist and businessmen with a few American servicemen returning from leave. Even though the flight was almost completly full, there was ample room to move around. Many people, as well as me, used the isles as a place to stretch their legs. A few passengers performed some Tai Chi movements to help revive their muscles.

I spent most of my time observing the other passengers. The rest of the time was spent watching reruns of CSI, the movies Robots and Guess Who?, which I had seen at least once. I was only able to nap briefly, each time be awoken by a stewardess whose backside hit my shoulder every time she passed. She never once smiled or acknowledged any of the passengers during the entire flight. I believe her love of the job, if there ever was any, had long since faded.

Unable to sleep, I passed the remaining couple of hours of the flight observing the plane’s telemetry on the small screen in front of me. It is no wonder that the wings of a plane have a tendancy to ice-up. At 48,000 feet the outside temperature is -56 degrees fahrenheit. As the nineteenth hour of flight neared, we began our decent into Tokyo International. Once on the ground, we had about a seven minute wait before we could disembark.

I was surprised that after such a long flight there was no pushing and shoving to escape what had been our home for nearly a day. It was a joy to be able to fully stretch and move about without bumping into anyone. As I was relishing my new found freedom I heard the words most travelers dread, “Your connecting flight will be delayed”.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, August 5th, 2005 at 12:47 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.