Day 1 - Am I going to make it?

  Beijing, China
Monday, August 14, 2006

So 3 days ago was the big terror scare in Great Briton, all beverages banned. Moderate freak-out in my head. Everybody says "have a great trip" and I kept responding "Yeah, if I manage to get on the plane!" I kept picturing 3 and 4 hour wait through the security checkpoint. Checking and double-checking to verify I am who I claim to be. I imagined skepticism everywhere, and general feeling of paranoia throughout the whole experience.

I'm very happy to report that I was wrong... On all counts.

After last minute plans at 3am last night, I finally get some shut-eye. 2 hours of sleep later, I'm up, grabbing snacks out of the fridge and hitting the road. Jamie was nice enough to drive me up to Portland and see me off. We're shooting for 2 hours before the flight, following all the travel advisories and news reports of massive clogging in the airports. I get to the ticket gate, I'm greeted by a wonderful United customer service person and I go through the self-checking without a hitch. Get my Chinese visa verified and then it's off to the security checkpoint. At this point It's about 90 minutes to takeoff, and I'm worried about getting through the lines.

We round the corner to the security point and...

It's empty.

And I mean _empty_. Probably 4 or 5 cattle troughs ready for people to come streaming through, and beside myself, there was 1 family of 4 (Hey, Mom's being "puffed" for bombs!) and way on the opposite side there were 2 businessmen going through the express line. It was crazy in a surreal kinda way.

I was worried about them confiscating my peanut-butter in my carry-on. I mean, if you can make a bomb out of a Nalgene bottle and a key fob, you'd think somebody would figure out a way to make a bomb out of peanut butter and fruit loops. Not that I'm carrying any fruit loops, that would just be too conspicuous. I'd bet MacGuyver could do it.

Anyway, the whole checkpoint process took about 2 minutes. The most time-consuming part was taking my shoes off and putting them back on. I guess they aren't worried about the terrorist peanut-butter factories yet.

So then I had more than an hour until my plane even started boarding. So I wandered up and down the concourse and discovered another marvelous thing: price-fixing!
On the eve of entering the largest communist state in the history of the world, I see indications of price-fixing in the Portland airport. But wherein I usually associate price-fixing in the United States to be a bad thing. A couple of vendors getting together and figuring out the most efficient way of gouging the consumer, this time it is the exact opposite. I looks like they decided to make the Portland airport look like something unique. No Wal-Mart airport here. The restaurants are all locally-grown, I didn't see a single McDonalds, Burger King or Subway. I saw something that resembled a microbrew straight out of the Portland east-side. I found a "Good Dog/Bad Dog" sausage place (And had a very early lunch) and a couple of other places. Ok, so I thought that was pretty great, let those travelling through PDX get a feeling for what the Portland area has to offer, but even better than that, and advertised in big letters on several signs: "at the same prices as other vendor locations". And it's true, no $10 hamburgers here, just local northwest vendors, at local northwest prices. I was both shocked and amazed that PDX admin seems to have taken a stance against price gouging that seems to have become a staple of American capitalism.

So, I sat down with my good dog and a bag of chips, had a nice little dose of protein before hitting the plane and started working on keeping this blog up to date.




At this moment I'm at approximately 31,000 feet, traveling uh... really fast... On my way to San Francisco. Sipping a ginger ale and typing away on this wonderful little device. I really need to make a separate post just to outline the technology gadgets I'm using on this trip. All my geek friends can have a field-day with that one. (And all the "normal" people can simply ignore that post)

Of course I realize that I'm only on the first leg of the journey. But again I'm happy to say that all the worry about flight delays and security concerns were unwarranted. So far, it's been a great day.



Ok, I spoke a little too soon about the empty checkpoints. I got off the plane in SF and tracked down the gate for the Bejing leg of my trip. Gate 102... Ok... Where is that? Turns out it's like 40 feet away, but you have to walk through 6 miles of hamster tubes in order to get there. And halfway along the walk, you see what looks like 25% of all the people on earth mashed into a little atrium. The signs for gate 102 tell them I need to walk through to the other side of this throng. Then it hits me: "This is the security checkpoint. So I start in the back of a line a quarter of a mile long and wait... And watch people and am silently thankful my flight has been delayed an extra 20 minutes. I don't really know how long it takes to get through, time doesn't really work the same way in airports. It either moves faster or slower than it does in the outside world. But all in all, it's not really all that bad. The people working the checkpoint are doing a really good job and most everybody seems to be far more patient than usual.

Then I get to the gate. The sign says Beijing, but everybody is speaking German. The announcements are in German, a see German writing on luggage and really start to wonder what's going on. Is there some kind of German convention going on in Bejing today that nobody told me about? Or maybe Bejing is really that much of an international city. So I'm sitting there an hour looking out the window at the nose of this giant airplane before I realize that it says Luftshansa on the side of it, and that there is a whole other gate kinda interspersed with 102. Then in a big flurry of activity, both planes board at once. Swarms of Chinese seems to just materialize out of the woodwork and clog right into the boarding "line". And over on the other side, there is a nice orderly line of classic german-looking people. I sat in the middle, not really needing to seat yet, and figured that neither "line" was really moving faster than the other.

12 hour flights suck.

There have been like a bajillion times I've sat down in front of a computer to do something... coding, analysis, gaming, browsing, whatever. And when I finally get up I'm all stiff because 7 or 8 hours have gone by without my even realizing it. Again, that time-compression thing. But on the plane, it's the opposite: do your best to keep yourself occupied for a while, and when you come out the other side, you realize 10 minutes have passed. And then you think to yourself "Ok! Now I just need to do that 60 more times.... And I'll still have 2 hours left!" Groan, sleeping is nigh impossible. I'm just too big and too much... Well... Everything. Although I'm trying out the earplug idea this time. Put them in before you take off and keep them in pretty much the whole flight. So far that is working out great.

Pride and Prejudice is on the in-flight movie screen right now. Does that mean you know you're in for a long flight? It's like sitting down and hearing the attendants announce "For you in-flight entertainment, we will be broadcasting an oral reading of War and Peace read to you by Droopy Dog."

Hey, at least it wasn't band of brothers I guess.

About halfway through the flight now. The screen told us we were flying over Vancouver and some Canadian national park, then parts of Alaska, and Mt. McKinley, then the international date like and into that part of Russian that you use in Risk to invade North America so the bastard will stop getting the 5 army bonus. But... Of course all we see is the plastic inside of this giant tube. For all I know, we might be on a startours ride. Up... Down... Left... Right... Up... Down... etc.
You ever wonder why the attendants are so vehement about keeping the blinds closed? Makes you wonder, eh?

Ok , the big arrival in China. We had to fly through some "thunder bumps" as the pilot called them. But I've been through a lot worse, and I haven't even flown that much. It was a pretty smooth flight and a very smooth landing.



I get off the plane and it's glorious to be on solid land again. They channel you through some more cattle troughs with glass walls, as if to tease you with the free world outside your little glass box. Then finally we reach a large room with about 30 gates, and almost as many lines. This is immigration, something Rebecca said would be gajillions of people, and it really wasn't that bad. A quick check of "zee papaz" and I'm on to the baggage claim. Nothing eventful other than a long wait, then customs takes all of 30 seconds, and *bam* I'm out and on my own in China. Rebecca said to look for the tall white chick towering over everybody else. Amidst a big long line of people holding signs for doctors, sportspersons, accountants, bakers and candle-stick makers, I don't see anything resembling my girl. I wonder to myself "maybe she really blends in now." And then I realize that is unlikely, but the other possibility, far more likely, is that she's testing me. She gave me these little phrases like "I can't find my girlfriend, could you help me call this phone number?"

I had images of me bumping through the language barrier and Rebecca hiding behind some big planter snickering as she watches, ready to jump to my rescue in case things go crazy.... Then there is this blur across my vision, a tall white object traveling at near light-speed as far as I can figure. Recognition tugs at my brain a split second before impact and there she is... In my arms. Memories and recognition flood my being as I'm momentarily overwhelmed by it all. Here she is... in the flesh... Like for reals! I'm here... In china! Holding this wonderful girl! Nothing has gone wrong! The plane didn't crash, or get blown up, my passport and visa all worked out well, nobody planted Columbian heroine in my bags only to get found in customs and end up in a Chinese gulag prison for the rest of my life (actually, they just shoot drug dealers in the back of the head here)... We both appeared to be healthy. I was all just too much. But here we were!

Today is a very good day.

We found a taxi, with the mandatory gajillion people she mentioned. Then about an hour to the hotel she booked. The taxi driver didn't know where it was, he really shouldn't have taken the fair, but he did, and then got pissed that he couldn't find the place. We pull up to this combination Ford/Hundai dealership and I'm like "uh... Is this our hotel?" and Rebecca is like "don't worry." We walk into this little side entrance and through a lobby about twice the size of my bathroom and I'm informed the elevator is broken and we have to walk up 4 flights of stairs. We start climbing and I'm seriously thinking this place looks like a set from some horror movie. I should probably make a separate post for my experience with the set of "Dark Water".

Once we get to the 4th floor, it looks like a decent hotel, and our room, while terribly small, it perfectly adequate. I sit down and take a rest for a little bit, we chat for awhile, then we head out to go get some dinner. About a mile away Rebeccaa takes me to this Indian restaurant. She knows it's my favorite kind of food and Chinese food after a 12 hour flight isn't the most appealing idea.

We sit down, make our orders and grin like idiots as we take in the reality that we're both here, in Beijing, with 11 days of vacation. No work, no homework, nobody else to balance our time with, and just a whole lot of love and affection shooting back and forth across the table.

I'm really crazy about this girl.

The food shows up and it's seriously some of the best Indian food I've ever had. The Naan is to die for and I couldn't get enough. We stuff ourselves, then make the walk back towards our hotel, taking a brief stroll in a hu-tong (a stereotypical Chinese alleyway lined with shops, stalls, garbage and living quarters) I'm glad this girl is adventurous and confident. There are so many people I've spent time with that would absolutely freak at that little excursion, and on the scale of things, it really wasn't that bad.

And I learned one of the fundamental rules of China... well, china city-life anyway: "If it doesn't smell like food, it smells like shit" This is so true. You'll be walking along smelling nothing. Then you're get a really stroll smell that will assault you. And that smell will always be one of two things: really tasty-smelling food, and really foul smelling lavatory waste. It really takes some getting used to.

Anyway, we made it back to the hotel and hit the sack early because of jet lag and all. By my count I'd only had about 6 hours of sleep in the past 50-odd hours.

So that concluded the first day of the adventure.