35,000 Feet, and Still Bloggin’
In our last adventure, I spoke of our departure from Beijing and our arrival at Shanghai. I also spoke of the skyline of Shanghai at night, which was quite a site to see. Now I write of our departure from Shanghai, and the amazing adventure that leads to my blogging this entry…..from 35,000 feet.
NOTE: This entry was originally written on September 8th, 2011.
Well, Shanghai is complete. After spending just four days there, we are on our way home. There is not a lot to tell of our stay there, other than it was luxurious to the last. Our room (or apartment, I would rather say) in downtown Shanghai was quite lovely, as were the paid-for meals we got to enjoy (we even liked our Subway meal!). Although during the daytime Shanghai was not that fantastic (although not polluted like Beijing was), at night it was pretty darn cool and the final night I wrote of in the bar at the 47th floor of our hotel was a nice finale. It was time to end our adventure in Asia however, and we were both ready to go home.
We had a “sedan” reserved for us by the Saito Kinen Festival and after checking out of our hotel we waited for it in the lobby. While waiting, a lovely Chinese prostitute (I am going to make a leap of faith that when you wear silver fingernail polish, a skirt, and a wig that you may be a hooker) sat down near us trying to initiate a business transaction with some Chinese business men nearby. They all seemed comfortable hanging out together, so I did not bother them. After about an hour, our sedan arrived, which ended up being a mini-van of sorts – not an amazing ride, but quite lavish for a Chinese taxi. We loaded our luggage and were on our way to Shanghai Pudong International Airport.
The ride to the airport was quite uneventful. It was a very hazy day as we were riding, so we had a hard time seeing into the distance from our vehicle. Still, you could get a feel of just how large of a city Shanghai was, and for miles and miles outside of the city you would still come across views of a dozen and more skyscrapers acting as apartment buildings. After about an hour, we arrived at our destination and exited the cab to get our baggage checked in and get ready to finally fly home. We did not know at the time, but our adventures were just about to start.
Oh my word did it take forever to get to our gate. Our flight was with American Airlines which only had one flight going out of Shanghai that day, so our entire check-in line was for that flight. Unfortunately it was also a full flight on a Boeing 777, a big behemoth of a plane, so the line went on forever. We patiently waited for our turn to check our bags and dealt with our hopefully final stares of the day. I have spoken before of the stares the Chinese make of foreigners, but apparently they are especially bad at airports. We eventually got through the line. After a brief hiccup having to pay an overweight bag fee (to hell with it, it was $50 for a 7,000 mile flight so we didn’t care), we moved on to the next line.
I figured we would have to deal with customs back in the states (either on our connecting flight in Chicago, or maybe in Dallas), but apparently you have to go through a sort of immigration check in China before leaving. We were stuck in another line again. Some guy from the States said it was extra security for the weekend of 9/11, but I did not agree. I thought it strange that they would have built an entire area of the airport just for enhanced security a few days a year. I tuned him out and went about my business waiting in line. The stares continued into this line. Fortunately there were many more Westerners this time, but there were still a few Chinese that felt the need to get a glance of the beautiful and unique Americans. After what seemed like centuries, we made it to the front of that line. It was nothing more than a passport check, so after just a moment I was through. Daveda took a few moments more since she was leaving with a working visa, but even her check was minimal. We were finally able to go to the gate……strike that, another darn line.
In the next line, it was your typical security check line. Fortunately that line was rather short and you are able to keep your shoes on (although the laptop and electronics come out to be searched and you have to remove your belt), so we were through that line very quickly. On the other side, we were fortunately finally done with lines and went on our way to our gate. We were in luck to be very close to our gate coming out of security and still had an hour before our flight, so we toured some shops nearby and had a cup of coffee to pass the time. Finally, it was time to board and go on our way for a long flight to Chicago then a short hop to our final destination in Dallas. We didn’t know, but our adventure was just beginning!
When it was time to board, we went on our way through the gate to get in the aircraft and were abruptly stopped….There was ANOTHER checkpoint here! I let out a sigh and gave my bags to the security person to have them checked. At this point I was beginning to think the other gentlemen was right and there was extra security around for the week proceeding 9/11. After taking a look at my bags, I was deemed not a terrorist and allowed on board. Daveda was also cleared of any jihad suspicion and also proceeded on board with me.
Daveda and I originally had terrible seats for this flight and we were going to have to spend 13 hours and 25 minutes in the two middle seats of a row containing 5 seats (a 777 has a layout that consists of 2 seats, an aisle, 5 more seats, a second aisle, then 2 final seats) near the very back of the plane (somewhere around row 45 or 50). Fortunately, the night before I had checked and some seats together on the end of row 22 were available so we had changed our seats to the better ones there. We made our way to our seats and sat down, ready to go home. Daveda joked while walking to our seats “Look what I gave up for you.” as she pointed to one of the business class seats, but she was quite happy hanging back in economy with me, as long as we were together. We got ourselves situated and got ready to depart. We had no idea what was about to happen.
“Excuse me, but isn’t this 22H?”, a young woman asked me. I replied that it was and was curious why she was asking me. She then said that I was in her seat and she showed me a boarding pass – with my seat number on it! I saw that the seat was mine, but that the seat number was written in; perhaps it was a fake. I then showed her my pass (fortunately with the seat number printed instead of handwritten) and apologized to her. I didn’t think she was scamming us per se, but I was not going to get bumped off of a flight when I have not been home in over 5 weeks. She left and I thought it was over, but then a minute or two later a flight attendant comes by and asks to see our boarding passes, first Daveda’s then my own. She walks away with our passes and I suddenly get nervous. We had passes to prove our seats a moment ago, but now we had nothing. How would we be able to prove to the attendants that we were supposed to be sitting there. Would we get stuck in Shanghai? I was a tense moment indeed.
In what seemed like hours (although in reality it was no more than 5 minutes), the attendant came back and handed back our passes. I was relieved that situation was over, until I looked at the passes. I was now 11E and Daveda was 12E. We had been moved and we were no longer together! I didn’t even have time to think about what that meant and we were pushed to get our bags and take our new seats.
That brings us to the title of this post. You see, at 6’4” you will never see me blogging on an airplane. The reason for that is because my size keeps me from being able to even think about opening a laptop to do any typing while in flight. Well, that is not an entire when you are in [ITALICS] business class. Because we were being moved from our original seats, we got free upgrades to business class seats. Yep, for both Daveda and I.
Wide seats, leg room, free unlimited food and drinks, two hot meals with real dishes and silverware, even a seat that reclines enough to completely lay flat for you to sleep – those are all now ours to enjoy. My favorite addition however, is lots of space to work on a laptop. In my new business class seat I will not be doing any sleeping. I will be too busy blogging – at 35,000 feet.
