Reflection final draft

'Longest flight ever'

I love airports; love them. They make me feel like anything is possible with so many links to the world. I love the diversity of the people at airports; watching them all come together to travel. Neither airports nor airplanes smell particularly good; with all different kinds of food smells, coffee, people, perfumes and cologne, but it is still an important part of keeping the memories of the whole experience.

Basically, it takes a lot to say I had a horrible experience via air travel. This memory wasn't even that bad, but I remember it well and the details stick out to me.
The flight from San Francisco to Osaka, Japan was the longest I'd been on an airplane; eleven hours.

I had asked for a window seat back in Salt Lake City and was told I had one. Alas when the attendant called my name to pick up my e-ticket, it said 'E50'.
... On a 747 airbus 'E' is dead center. As it was a full flight and I was one of the ten people aboard who didn't speak Japanese (fluently, in my defense) there was no hope of trading.
So I settled into my seat and took in my surrounding seat-mates: A pair of giggling newly-weds to my right and a boy with a staring problem on my left.

"It's all good." I told myself, "I brought three books and my IPod."

As the plane began backing out and begin taxiing, my stomach did a back flip. I couldn't see out. I could suddenly smell everyone’s breathing around me; that gross ‘used air’ smell. I'd only had Claustrophobia completely derail me once before when I got stuck in a dryer playing hide and go seek. But at that moment I could feel the terror clawing its way up my throat. The woman next to me asked if I was alright, as she noticed my whole body going rigid.

"Just fine." I squeaked. I'm so screwed! I yelled in my head. I can't do this the entire trip! I felt my lungs seem to get smaller, all the smells and sounds around me grow sharper, as if you body really thinks it's going to die and these are the last sights and smells it will be aware of. It was one of the moments where you decide if you or your fear is in control.

As the plane straightened out and began forward, I felt minutely better; my heart rate was slowing down only to speed back up again as we began to speed down the runway.
This is my favorite part about flying; The G-Force pressing you back into your seat; nothing as silly as a crappy seat was going to ruin this for me. I usually get a goofy grin on my face about now.

The plane reached its cruising altitude and my stomach had gotten used to the feel of the motion, even if I couldn't 'see' it. I began to read my first book when I took notice of the occupants in the row in front of me: four small children between the ages of four and six who all felt their opinion was most important; enter the magical IPod.

I began to read my first book trying to ignore the mouth-breathing boy next to me reading over my shoulder when they brought drinks around. The steward was kind and asked me what I'd like.

"Root Beer, please if you have it."

He heard the beer part. So seventeen year old I sat with an opened can of beer unsure of what to do. It smelled of yeasty bread and I crinkled my nose.The newly-wed man on my right laughed and said he'd trade me his Coke.

After several hours of more awkward experiences of climbing over others to go the bathroom, adjusting my seating position and elbowing someone, laughing out loud at my book, and overall feeling like an over sized American I started to get a little wiggy. It seemed as though I had always been on this plane. Had I ever been in Utah? It felt like years ago. The strangers around me felt familiar although I knew none of them or even talked to them; as if we had been on this journey together for months. I can only imagine what it felt like four hundred years ago when immigrants came to North America and they were on a ship for several months together. It seemed like the small airplane icon on the screen map in front of me never moved any closer to the International Date line much less Japan. I realized when we actually DID cross the International Date Line, that my Fourth of July had only been seven hours long.

It was sleep deprivation that made me start to question the passage of time. But I had never been able to sleep on airplanes.The seats always feel too small and too conformed with hard arm rests and it’s impossible to curl up without looking like a contortionist. Everyone’s bodies begin to sweat, feet come out of shoes, others around me snore and cough, and the entire plane itself just seems to be permeated with a thick human smell. No wonder so many people died of disease on ship passages months long.

At last, I felt the Plane begin to descend into the Osaka Kansai Airport.

I'm calling ahead for a window seat next time. I told myself.

We all piled off the plane, only too excited to be free of the confining space that we had occupied for the last 11 hours and into the shuttle-train thing that took us to the main terminal pick up our baggage. I began to worry how I was possibly going to find my brother and sister-in-law in the throng of a huge foreign airport.

Both my huge, American sized bags came out within the first ten out of the mysterious plastic flaps. In any other case this would have been wonderful, except now I had no one to follow to the next stop to leave the airport. Trying not to feel too foolish, I dragged my bags onto a cart and went to the restroom to think of what to do next. I decided to go ask someone who looked like they had authority where I could find a phone.

It was my first experience asking a Japanese person, in Japanese, in Japan, a question. I approached a man and said,

“Sumimasen, denwa doko desu ka (Excuse me, where is a phone?)”

I'm sure it sounded garbled to him.

The man raised an eyebrow, pointed to the translucent glass doors and walked away. So only feeling slightly stupid, I handed my passport to the guard at the door and walked through the doors.

Garth and Yumie were both there waiting for me. I couldn’t have been more relieved to see them and that there was no need for a phone finding quest.

It was the end of one adventure and the beginning of the really big one (we only got waylaid once when we couldn’t find where they parked the car).