Snowy Roads & Superpowers & Why I Love Flying Overseas

I can handle my kids just fine when they’re not around. The feeling is mutual I’m sure since most of what I say is warm fatherly stuff like Turn that off and Clean this up and GARBAGE goes in the #$%* GARBAGE CAN!

What passes for dinner conversation in our house is mostly about past or future stuff. (It’s hard to polish the present with nostalgia or hope.) And a lot of that largely revolves around traveling, our only strong event in the never-ending Family Olympics.

In December 2019 our conversations were particularly lively; for the first time in three years we’d be flying to New Jersey for Christmas. My wife loves going to my mom’s house and ravaging her nuclear holocaust supply of canned soup. My kids love Grandma’s house for the cable TV, the pool table and the pinball machine.

Three kids with three diversions to share. They fight over all of it the entire time we’re there.

Life & Near-Death in Cambodia

Half my life ago, when I was twice the idiot I am now, I flew to Cambodia to meet up with two friends who were riding tandem bicycles around the world. This was my first trip to a country without a sanitation department so naturally I was pretty excited.

The plan was for me to ride on the back of one of their bikes as we pedaled from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and out to the temples of Angkor. When I say the plan I really mean my plan. The plan, according to my friends, was not only to cycle across Cambodia and the rest of the world but to live to tell about it.

My plans tend to lack such detail.

Virtual Vacation - New Orleans, USA

New Orleans, I've always said, is the only place in the United States where you'll find culture of any substance. But of course this isn’t true. There are pockets of organic, uncontrived character in every corner and plain of the American west where Native American traditions still survive.

Culture goes back a long way in the New Orleans area, further even than the earliest gumbo recipe. Watson Brake, in northern Louisiana, is a burial mound complex thatwas constructed over centuries by a hunter-gatherer society. Dating from about 3500 BC, they are a thousand years older than the Pyramids of Giza.

Virtual Vacation - Chur, Switzerland

The town of Chur sits like a decorative knick-knack among the Alps of eastern Switzerland. The streets of the old neighborhood are a storybook come to life. The Plessur River flows down from the southeast, cutting a straight line through town, joining the fabled Rhine out on the northwest skirts. The verdant alpine slopes up above watch over Chur like loving grandparents. The surrounding countryside is replete with vineyards, keeping the town in good spirits.

If you aren’t checking flights by now I don’t know what else to tell you.

If you are checking flights, be prepared. Chur sits in the middle of a rough circle formed by Zurich, Munich, Salzburg, Venice, Milan and Geneva. The intolerable wonders of Paris and Vienna are slightly further-flung but eminently accessible. What hell to have to choose which city to fly into! You’ll then have to tolerate being whisked headlong into the Swiss Alps via a train system that is the transportation equivalent of satin sheets.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Virtual Vacation - Yakushima Island, Japan

Yakushima is a circular island off the southwest tip of Japan. By boat or by plane, it takes a bit of time and a chunk of change to get there. Barely fifteen miles across, Yakushima is home to fewer than fifteen thousand people, inhabiting towns and villages strung around the island’s perimeter. There’s no traffic, no noise, and definitely no night life.

There is, however, a lot of rain. Yakushima’s mountains manage to suck in just about every cloud floating across the East China Sea, bringing several meters - meters! - of annual rainfall to the island. Bring a change of socks.

Virtual Vacation - Arequipa, Peru

 

The desert is like a campfire in its ability to empty your mind. Gazing out the windows of the bus, the view constantly changing as we leaned and lurched through curve after unforgiving curve, climbing up into the mountains of southern Peru, I had only two thoughts in my head. One, who on this bus was going to throw up first, and two, was that person sitting directly behind me?

As the land plateaued and the road straightened another question came to mind, one whose answer eluded me for years.

What made the town of Arequipa back there so cool?

Virtual Vacation - Cañón del Colca, Peru

Depending on who you talk to, the Cañón del Colca in southern Peru is the third or fourth, or maybe the fifth, deepest canyon in the world.

Some say Nepal’s Kali Gandaki Gorge holds the title. Where the river runs between the peaks of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri the elevation difference reaches 5,570 meters (18,275 feet). For others the Tsangpo Canyon in Tibet is the deepest; though listed at 5,500 meters (18,000 feet) deep, at one point the river flows 6,009 meters (19,714 feet) below the land above it.

Then there’s the DenmanGlacier, hidden under the snows of Antarctica. Reaching 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) below sea level doesn’t make it the deepest in relation to the land around it, but it does make this glacier-carved valley the lowest point of dry land on Earth.

Cañón del Colca, then, seems to sit at #3 on the list of World’s Deepest Canyons. With a maximum depth of 3,501 meters, this remarkable hole in the ground is fully twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA.

Which is nice. But that’s not why we’re here.

Virtual Vacation - Essaouira, Morocco

From the stone ramparts of the old medina you can watch the waves crash against the rocky islands sitting just off shore. In the maze of narrow alleyways within these walls it’s easy to feel lost, not as one who can’t get home but as one who is so far away from anything resembling home that home might as well not exist anymore.

That long and distant island running off to the left is (probably) the island of Mogador.

The city sits halfway between the stately and tempestuous Strait of Gibraltar and the sandy wasteland of as-Sahra al-Gharbiyah, also known as Western Sahara. The walls can look as old as time itself, making the colors of the carpets displayed on them seem incongruous, even impossible. Half-ajar doors leading to dim rooms and hallways lend as much mystery as closed ones. There are cow’s brain sandwiches for sale.

I arrived in Essaouira not knowing what to expect. I left with what I take from most places I’ve ever visited: spontaneous photos, fragmented memories, and, at best, a rudimentary understanding of what I’d just seen.

Only now, over a decade later, as I search for things to say about a few of my photographs of Essaouira, am I understanding what I saw – and realizing what I missed.

Virtual Vacation - Dakigaeri Valley, Japan

Japanese history – presented in true Japanese form – gives dates of events in terms of eras. So I was intrigued when I read that Dakikaeri Jinja, the modest shrine at the mouth of this Dakigaeri Valley, was established in the thirteenth year of the Kanbun Era (寛文13年).

My knowledge of historical Japanese eras mirrors my knowledge of United States Presidents. I am familiar with the first one, the most recent few, and a handful of the more significant ones in between. The rest I may have heard of but don’t know anything about.

In other words, just like I have no idea when Millard Fillmore was president, I had no idea when the Kanbun Era fell in the annals of Japanese history. It could have been two hundred years ago, it could have been two thousand. This shrine in the sticks of Akita Prefecture may have been founded when Jesus was walking the earth or when Lincoln was getting shot. And quite frankly, I liked the idea of not knowing. The mystery adds to the allure.

So I was a tad disappointed to find out 寛文13年 was actually 1673 AD. Sure, this means Dakikaeri Jinja is a century older than the United states. But as old as Japan is, it’s hard to get excited about a shrine that didn’t even exist when Christopher Columbus started slaughtering the Indians.

Call me superficial. I’ve been called much worse.

Virtual Vacation - The Island Town of Burano, Italy

The ancient port town of Altinum in northern Italy was a bustling trade center until the mid-5th Century when ravaging Huns laid the place to waste. The town made a comeback, but when the Lombards began running barbaric roughshod through the region a hundred years later the people put down their pasta and scattered, taking refuge on a series of islands in the Venetian Lagoon. In an interesting mix of nostalgia and tempting fate, these refugee settlers named six of the islands after the six doors that did absolutely no good protecting their now-obliterated city.

One of those islands, Burano, was named after the Porte Boreana, the North Door. Burano is known for having lots of fishermen, dwindling numbers of traditional lace makers, and homes that make Martha Stewart look like a bore.

Virtual Vacation - Mae Salong, Thailand

Mae Salong is a quiet mountain ridge village in the highlands of northern Thailand. Once part of the Golden Triangle opium trade, Mae Salong in 1961 became a refuge for asylum-seeking members of China's anti-communist Kuomintang (KMT) forces. Known today as Santikhiri, Mae Salong is a subtly exotic island in the sky. Getting there on a bicycle is an excruciating kind of fun.

In 1949 approximately 12,000 anti-communist rebels fled the Yunnan Province of China and hid out in Burma before eventually crossing over into Thailand. For a while they supported themselves through their involvement in the healthy opium trade, but in the 1970's the Thai government made them an offer: help the Thai government put down their own communist uprising in exchange for Thai citizenship and a solid pat on the back. One condition of the agreement was that they give up their opium habit and replace it with something more healthy. And the Mae Salong tea industry was born.

Virtual Vacation - Old Town Ljubljana, Slovenia

The symbol of Ljubljana, capital city of Slovenia, is the Ljubljana Dragon. According to myth, the slaying of a dragon brought a bounty of water to the land, ensuring the fertility of the Earth. Oddly, this is said to have also created the Ljubljana Marshes, which periodically threaten Ljubljana with flooding. The people of Slovenia thus have an ancient love-hate kind of thing with their mascot.

The Ljubljanica River may be unimaginatively named, but it has a colorful history. It seems that this river has served as a sort of ritualistic dumping ground for various civilizations over thousands of years. From the Stone Age to the Renaissance the Romans and the Celts and innumerable lesser-known and unnamed peoples have offered their artifacts, dropped their wallets and tossed out their trash in the waters between here and Vrhnika, about twenty kilometers upstream. The inevitable clash between historians and treasure hunters compelled Slovenia's national parliament to declare the river a site of cultural importance, making it illegal to dive without a permit. Swim at your own risk.

Flipping Backward, Flipping Forward...Flipping Forget It



Last seen in Hamburg...

How much crazy, zany fun can actually be had flying from Japan to New Jersey and back? Enough for one blog post? Two, maybe, if the kids or the wife or the person in the next seat really goes off the deep end? Three if everyone goes long?

Besides one record-setting vomit exhibition there was little on either of our flights that would strike the passive passenger. BUT…to the ultra-observant there was enough for five blog posts. Yes, I am that perceptive.

I would have stopped at four, but United Airlines had to, on December 29th, put a copy of the January issue of Hemispheres, their in-flight magazine, in the seat pocket in front of me for my thirteen-hour journey back to Japan. Why can’t they just quit it with the fodder? Don’t they understand I can’t keep my derisive mouth shut?

In other words, this is all United’s fault.

As I explained in this post, I flip through magazines from back to front. So once again my juvenile amusement at United’s expense starts with the back cover and an ad for…I have no idea.

Buds, Socks & Violence

In-Flight Sensorial Entertainment

The best thing to ever happen to an overseas flight.

I like flying. I always have. Despite the occasional and inevitable stresses, the idea-come-to-life of getting into a metal tube, taking off into the air and landing somewhere usually far away and sometimes worlds apart has never failed to stir something visceral and pleasing in me.

This morning, however, has been something else altogether. (If you read my last post you know what I’m talking about.) So as I sit restlessly in my seat in the waiting area outside Dulles Airport’s Gate 29, waiting for United Flight 803 to Tokyo to begin boarding, I look over at my family with the kind of pride that can only come from the fact that I haven’t strangled anyone today.

Two vinyl-cushioned seats to my right sits a woman who is also watching her kids – who, like my kids, are noticeably half not-Japanese. I imagine her husband is from an English-speaking country, which would virtually guarantee that she speaks English. This is because we English-speakers can only handle not speaking English for so long.

She looks calm though not completely at ease. Then again that pretty much describes every Japanese person alive. Still, we’ve got a good fifteen minutes before we go anywhere and I want to make use of this chance to meet someone new.

I like talking to people as much as I like flying. Because you never know who you’ll click with. You never know who will become a life-long friend.

You never know who might have a vacation house.

Plus, with a ready-made conversation (“So where are you headed?...Yes, I mean where in Japan?”) and a bunch of empty minutes to fill, I feel compelled to throw out at least a nugget of small talk because, to put it bluntly, I feel stupid if I don’t.

“Your kids are cute,” I tell her. It’s true. They are. They’re also a bit hyper but it’s a big plane, I’ll probably never see them again except maybe at baggage claim. (Cue ominous music.)

“Thank you,” the woman says, barely a hint of an accent. Which means her husband can probably count to ten in Japanese and not much more because (and I see it all the time in Japan) he doesn’t have to.

Our conversation inches along and I find out she went to university in North Carolina, where she met her now-husband – who is now returning from somewhere that, judging by his expression, was not particularly thrilling. I nod when we make eye contact. He nods back – I think – and turns a disinterested eye to his older daughter. She seems about six, the average between her 8-year-old height and her 4-year-old demeanor.

The woman tells me they live in Okinawa now, on the main island where she grew up. I tell her without a drop of false interest that I’d love to see a little bit of Okinawa… that I’ve been dying to check out Miyakojima and Iriomotejima Islands… and have been since I first got to Japan in 2001… because it all looks so beautiful and serene… and then of course there’s the Ryukyu culture… which must be pretty interesting…

And I wait…for a reaction…a small tinge of mutual interest…

“You should go,” she says, dropping her sentence off like it’s the end of our conversation.

So much for that vacation house.

My kids are being their usual sleep-deprived selves. My middle kid is walking up and down the rows of seats, slapping each empty one as he goes. His older brother is slouched in his seat on the other side of my wife, daydreaming and sticking his leg out every time his brother makes another pass. My daughter is singing as she goes through this sort of slow-motion interpretive dance routine entitled “Indecision”. My wife seems to be enjoying it, insofar as she doesn’t have to do anything about it.

At this time we’d like to welcome aboard our passengers who pay us extra money to make them feel special, as well as any families traveling with small children. Please make your way toward the gate so we can begin our pre-boarding. The rest of you, please stay in your god damn seats until we make our general boarding call.

They never say that last part but I think they should.

Up at the gate is a woman with a tightly-clipped ponytail and a voice that makes you wonder if she ate too many crayons when she was a child. Her job for the moment is to scan our boarding passes and our passports on a little white machine. My wife hands them to her and gets an immediate tongue-lashing. Show me your passports ONE AT A TIME, open to your picture, and with your boarding pass right side up NOT upside down.

To the passive observer this might sound like anger, or frustration, or a slowly percolating breakdown. But I know what it is – leftover burnt sienna and periwinkle.

Behind a partition wall no fewer than four people in wheelchairs are facing the gate, anxiously waiting to board. They’re all surrounded by sizable entourages, half made up of strangers who don’t want to wait for general boarding as if that will help them get to Tokyo any faster. The wheelchairs and the entourages are all in a clump, and there’s nowhere for us to wait but in the empty space between them and the gate.

The evil in their eyes abates when my daughter rolls her walker into view.

It returns when the rest of her entourage shows up.

As we all wait for someone to open the door to the jetway I decide that instead of letting these four groups of people pass I’m just going to board ahead of them. I know, this isn’t going to get us to Tokyo any faster either. We could board dead last for all I care. Of course it’s nice not having to apologize to thirty-seven rows of people for my son slapping their armrests as he walks down the aisle.

Propagating a Smelly Japanese Tradition

My first ever flight to Japan was a journey into novelty and odd habits. At the gate in San Francisco Airport a woman with neat black hair and a voice like honey was offering up all kinds of announcements in Japanese. People were bowing to each other, trading words I couldn’t comprehend. Everyone had clean luggage. Not since my last visit to the mall in New Jersey did I feel like such a minority.

On the plane I sat upright in my seat, jittery with excitement. I’d have talked to someone if I thought anyone could understand me. As it was I’d spend the minutes before take-off reveling silently in everyone’s odd behavior.

Some people were folding their jackets and tucking them neatly into the overhead like they were stocking the shelves at Nordstrom’s. Others were maneuvering their neck pillows into place, or straightening out the safety pamphlets and barf bags in the seat pockets in front of them. One of the flight attendants made her slow, smiling way down the aisle, passing out ivory white washcloths that had within the last eight seconds been dunked like spring rolls in a pot of boiling water. The flight attendant wouldn’t even touch them. She was using a pair of metal tongs to pass them out – into the bare hands of the passengers smiling all around me.

While I was playing hot potato with my scalding spring roll the Japanese person across the aisle calmly unrolled hers and began methodically wiping her hands. The man next to her buried his face in his before caressing his throat and neck with it. A bald man three rows up tossed his steaming cloth into the air and started shining his tan-yellow dome.

My fingers were starting to blister. What were these people, firewalkers?

Self-immolation exercises over, they all started sliding their shoes off. To my relief no flight attendants came down the aisle with a tray of hot coals. Instead my new friends simply placed their shoes neatly under the seats in front of them and got comfy for the ten-hour journey home.

Now that, I thought, is more like it.

I’ve been flying with my shoes off ever since.

Much to the chagrin, perhaps, of those seated near me.

I was up this morning at 4:15, dressing myself in warm clothes and caffeine so I could drive my sister to Newark Airport for her little flight back to California. (Six short hours and three measly time zones. Pshaw.) By 5:00 I was on my way back home to dump my own family into a van with all our stuff to go right back Newark Airport. From there we flew to North Carolina where we had to make a run for our next flight to Washington, DC where we then had to go through security (where they don’t even make you take your shoes off anymore, how’s that for ironic?) and find our way to our next gate – which was, of course, at the far end of the terminal, nothing beyond it save for the window that kept my daughter from launching herself right out onto the tarmac.

Almost a full eight hours in these socks. Another eighteen to go. I sat in the waiting area near our gate, trying to land a free vacation house and dying to free my feet from their sticky, sweaty straightjackets. Whoever was going to be sitting next to me on the plane would do well to have a stuffed up nose.
 

I can handle the flight. My feet can't.

And look! Who’s sitting next to me? My new sort-of friend from Okinawa!

“Time to relax for a bit,” I say, smiling, hoping to share a bit of light-hearted commiseration.

“Unfortunately we have to fly to Okinawa after we get to Narita,” she says.

I offer her a trade, her flight to the sub-tropics for my drive north to freezing Fukushima.

That free vacation home was obviously not meant to be.

I kick my shoes off and get comfy.

And Now to Cover My Ears

I’m in the middle seat in the middle section of the plane. My daughter is in the aisle seat to my left, saying no to every kids movie and cartoon on the in-flight entertainment menu. The next twelve hours should be fun. Her mother is across the aisle, an empty seat between her and the girl at the window. My boys are right behind me and Little Miss Thumbs Down.

We only bought these plane tickets a month ago so the seating arrangement is actually quite fortuitous. It’ll be even better if the wife trades places with me at some point.

My kids’ excitement about the in-flight entertainment free-for-all was equaled only by my excitement about the free in-flight beer. I decided I’d leave them alone if they’d do the same for me.

Yeah right.

I’d barely polished off my first can of Goose Pilsner when my daughter broke the beautiful silence between us.

“Daddy I can’t…” She doesn’t know how to say what she wants so she starts jabbing at her touch screen. This, I take it, means she’s bored with the cartoon she’s been watching for fifteen minutes. In German.

While packing for our return to Japan I found an old pair of headphones – from my son’s school on Long Island I think. Finders keepers. I stuck them in my carry-on. Now, with everyone else trying to keep those silly little ear buds from falling out of their ears I’m setting up for some in-flight surround sound.

That is, until Little Miss Nichtvergnügen tells me her silly little ear buds won’t stay in her ears. (“Daddy, this… um… mimi kara ochiru” to quote her verbatim.) And since I’m Dad of the Year again I give her mine. And ask her to listen in a language she understands.

So much for my in-flight surround sound.

Reason #465 I love flying: the chance to see a few movies I’ve never seen.

I like movies. Some of them I love. But life comes with about eight hundred thousand options for spending any given two hours, and for me watching a movie rarely ranks high enough to get a turn. Same for TV, particularly now that all but about four of those eight hundred thousand options involves doing something with my kids, doing something for my kids, or cursing while I’m cleaning up after my kids.

On a plane, however, my parental obligations are limited. The bathroom is back there, go for it; push this to play Dora…and this to change it to English; here use my headphones now be quiet and enjoy the show.

On a plane I tend to limit my parental standards as well.

Kids are finally fully occupied. Wife is more or less snoozing. And my feet are drying out and feeling great. I snag another beer, stick those cheapo ear buds halfway to my eardrums and get ready to dig into one of those television series people are always talking about.

Today I start with Game of Thrones. I’ll admit that until this moment I knew nothing about the show except (1) I was in the planetary minority for never having seen an episode, and (2) one of the characters is played by a guy I went to high school with. Okay, I didn’t go to high school with him, he was a couple of years ahead of me and I don’t think we ever spoke. All of which adds to my shame for (1).

And all right (3) I also knew that ‘Thrones’ (I can call it that now) takes place in a world without electricity, soap or blue jeans. Everyone (I imagined) wore animal skins and furs, and metal things meant to keep them from being impaled by other metal things wielded by other people in animal skins. So I could add ‘rules against impaling people’ to the list of things that didn’t exist in this world.

Still, I was not prepared for the opening scene of this particular episode. Holy Christ.

My barf bag goes flying as I whip my in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket to shield my daughter’s eyes from the carnage. Simultaneously I’m jabbing at the touch screen to make it all go away. My daughter gets nightmares if an episode of The Smurfs has too much Gargamel, this gorefest would send her into an irreversible clinical fugue.

Luckily she’s deep into her cartoon, where all the people and animals and furniture are speaking Korean, or maybe Hebrew.

I’m still clearing my own head of the carnage when the meal carts appear.

One of my five mid-flight snacks and my only mid-flight beer.

Reason #6 I love flying: the in-flight meals. Let me tell you why.

First off, it provides an excuse to order another beer. Second, I like food. Third, I actually like airline food. I do. Because it’s like Christmas, peeling back that aluminum foil cover to see what kind of surprise awaits inside. You can order the fish or the beef or the pasta or the Spanish omelet, but there’s no way you can predict what it’s going to look like. Just like traveling itself, enjoying your in-flight meal requires a certain amount of intrepidness.

One last reason I like airline food comes into play when I’m traveling with my kids. I don’t bother requesting kids’ meals, I just let those flight attendants bring them the real deal. Which they can rarely finish without my help.

The downside to mealtime on a plane – in the middle seat of the plane’s middle section between two women who are in no rush to clear their plates and return their trays to the upright position – is that I’m stuck in my seat. Might as well have my seatbelt on though I can’t even shift enough to pull it out from under my butt. So as much as I look forward to eating, soon enough I can’t wait for it all to disappear. My desire to get up and stretch is always – always – at its highest when I can’t.

The real-time flight map puts us over the Hudson Bay. I suspect this means a view of gray water or a view of gray clouds. In December the Far North doesn’t exactly sparkle with sunshine.

Six miles below the emergency exit window the waters of the Hudson Bay are indeed dark and gray, running in long crooked lines through a vast mosaic of ice floes. As far as I can see the world down there is made up of nothing but sheets of white and streaks of liquid charcoal.

There can, in nature, be beauty in monotony.

The flight attendant in the kitchen area behind me asks if I’d like a cup of coffee. I say yes, because she seems genuinely happy for the chance to pour me a cup of coffee and because I figure it will help keep me awake so I can enjoy another Goose Pilsner.

Back in Row 38 my boys are turning into screen-watching zombies and I tell them to take a break. For the first time in their lives they agree, without argument or hesitation. It’s like they want to stop watching but have been rendered helpless by their glowing, pixilated masters, destined to remain frozen and staring until someone comes along and says the magic word. They’d both doze off in the next ten minutes. Which means they’ll rest their eyes, they’ll rest their tired systems, and they won’t be downing any Cokes for at least a couple of hours.

My daughter, on the other hand, is already unconscious. This is good. Half of her unconscious self, however, is on my seat. This is bad. My wife has her feet up on the empty seat next to her. She’s out too. Finally, a chance to sit and relax and enjoy my flight with absolutely no interruptions – and I’ve got no place to sit.

Not true, actually. I have the front half of my seat. Which means a close-up look at the opening scene of another movie I’ve decided to watch: Lincoln.

This graphic bit of cinematography is unlike the beginning of that Game of Thrones episode in that there are hundreds more men, much more civilized in their textile uniforms as they brutally slaughter each other. I shut it off and look for the Smurfs.

Instead I find the funniest television show ever conceived: Impractical Jokers. This sort of artistry demands proper viewing. Read that as justification for saying Screw it, if my daughter is that tired she’ll sleep through this. I lift her head, shoulders and half her torso off my seat so I can slide in under her. She lets out the obligatory whimper and falls silent again, her head on my lap and her feet sticking out into the aisle.

The next hour of Impractical Jokers is pure revelry. The woman next to me seems unnerved by my laughter. Serves her right for not inviting me to Okinawa.

I pass on a movie involving Denzel Washington and a big gun and flip open my copy of Hemispheres,United’s in-flight magazine. We’re still a few days shy of New Year’s but the January issue is already out. They must have read my breakdown of the December issue.

My thumb stops on a page advertising a gadget that, as far as I can tell through all the platitudes and eco-fluff, is a solar-powered remote-controlled module thingy that you can connect to your ‘smart home ecosystem’. In other words, you can now use ecologically responsible solar power to turn on the microwave, the toaster, the blender, the television and all the lights in the house ten minutes before you pull into the driveway.

Not surprisingly there are ‘a great deal of people eager to get on the waiting list for this product before it becomes a worldwide craze.’

Yes, this is just what billions of people across Sub-Saharan Africa and the Asian interior have been pining for. Along with maybe food, clean drinking water and band-aids.

We’re well up into the Arctic Circle when I slide out from under my daughter (whimper, shift, keep sleeping) and go back to my window at the emergency exit door. Below us the world is pitch black. Up above the universe is even pitcher black. Straight ahead, a few thousand miles beyond the light at the tip of the plane’s wing, a horizontal strip of blue splits the blackness in two. The bottom edge of this streak of heaven is lined in orange. This is the edge of the Earth, the top of the world, hiding a sun that now hangs above the Indian Ocean, or maybe Sri Lanka.
 



Literally, the top of the world.

Like everyone else who isn’t a vampire I’ve seen thousands of sunsets. But somehow, seeing the sun’s last rays over the western horizon is nothing like witnessing that same sun throwing its light up over the top of the world. If you’ve never seen it I highly recommend it. (If, once you see it, you aren’t wholly moved and impressed that’s fine I guess. Just don’t come crying to me for a refund.)

Behind me the flight crew is preparing our mid-flight snack. If my kids are still sleeping I get to eat four of whatever they’re serving. I look over at my wife when I get back to my seat.

Make that five.

The downside is that the flight attendant serving the drinks won’t give any of my children a Goose Pilsner with their snack.

My female not-quite-friend from Okinawa is gone from the seat next to me, replaced with her husband. I ask him where he’s from although I already know from his wife. I ask him what sparked their move to Okinawa (where, I know, his wife is from). I ask him how he likes it and what he does.

Exhausted from the string of two- and three-word answers he’s given me, he doesn’t ask me any questions.

Still on the list of in-flight movies I want to see is The Reverent. I know less about this flick than I did about Thrones. (I didn’t go to high school with Leonardo DiCaprio so I feel no shame about it.) Actually, I know nothing about this blockbuster (was it a blockbuster? I don’t know.) except at some point our hero Leo is going to be out in the cold, probably for a long time.

What is it with United and their fetish for gore-laden movies? Where’s Adam Sandler when you need him? Good lord.

My daughter is stillsleeping, in the same position she was in when I left her. So how the hell did she get all tangled up like that in her headphone cord? It takes me thirty minutes to extract the thing from her curled-up body and the blankets and pillows she’s unconsciously commandeered. And all throughout I’m glancing over at Leonardo and his not-nice friends. I don’t know what any of them are saying, though it’s easy enough to guess.

Holy shit, those people are coming to kill us!…Holy shit they killed a lot of us!…What are we going to do with these bear skins? Leave them here. No! Yes! No! Yes! No Yes No Yes Holy shit here come more people to kill us!…

By the time I pull the headphones free from the static lump of chaos that is my daughter and her debris Leonardo is all by himself so no one’s saying anything. Then the bear shows up so at least I get to listen to the growling and grunting and (insert gerund for whatever Leonardo is doing as the bear rips into him).

Rare nobody-getting-an-arrow-to-the-face scene from The Reverent.

For the last twenty minutes Mr. Motormouth’s older daughter has been sitting on his lap. She’s facing away from me, so she hasn’t been able to see all the people on my screen getting an arrow in the face.

She also isn’t able to nail me with any of the vomit that is suddenly shooting out of her mouth. This isn’t a mouthful of spit and bile from the recent bit of turbulence. This is a scene from the Exorcist. What has she been doing, chugging Goose Pilsners?

By the time she’s done dad has about a quart of putridity spread quite impressively over a large portion of his t-shirt and jeans. He puts his movie on pause and Denzel Washington freezes, right in the middle of shooting a bunch of people in the face.

After an hour of fun involving the interminably upbeat flight crew and a bunch of spray bottles with biohazard symbols on them, only a couple of water stains and the faint odor of half-digested mid-flight sandwich remain. That and a plastic garbage bag with dad’s clothes in it. He’s back in his seat, in shorts and a sweatshirt, likely wishing he’d just stayed in North Carolina.

It’s around 8pm New Jersey Time. That makes it 10am in Japan. That also makes it 36 hours without sleep save for the few minutes I might have dozed off before my alarm went off at 4:15am. And really, it’s no big deal. Because even if you take away all the movies and food and free Goose beer, I love flying. I love living the fantastic idea of stepping into a metal tube on one side of the Earth and, a bunch of hours later, stepping out into the other. I love looking out over the world, at ice floes and endless clouds and the orange line of the light of the sun streaking across the infinite black universe.

Despite the inevitable stress and the moments of quiet rage and the silly ear buds, I love it.

We’re flying over Japan, south along the eastern coast that dips in and out of view beneath my

I spent eight years of my life down there, somewhere.

emergency exit window. Out the window to the west a hundred thousand clouds float above the mountainous snowscape of the Tohoku region, where for the better part of eight years I spent my time living and teaching and cycling and exploring. And still, just in this one part of Japan there’s still so much I haven’t seen.

Back at headquarters the kids are awake. Bleary-eyed and disoriented, they seem unsure about whether they want to bring their television screens back to life. Mr. McVomit is back in his original seat in the row in front of me, watching the Simpsons with a pair of pink headphones on. Probably took them from his daughter for her Exorcist routine.

We’ll be eating again shortly. I will be, anyway. No guesses as to what the kids will do. Then it’s all procedure: fill out the customs declaration card (one per family), pass through immigration, collect our baggage and hitch a ride back to J-Parking where our van will be waiting.

My wife will have stashed two cans of Goose beer in her carry-on. I’ll want to guzzle them and fall asleep in the passenger seat.

But no. Because being Dad of the Year comes with no reprieve from responsibility. So I will drive as we head north toward Tohoku, the land we just flew over, to go stay a few days with my wife’s parents at their home in Fukushima.

The kids are rested and happy. My wife is not driving and happy.

It feels good to be home, on the other side of the world.

Hello again, Japan.

 

How NOT to Plan Your Flight Overseas

Yet Another Air Travel Tragicomedy 

 ACT ONE 

December 29, 2016 – 3:30am – I’ve been curled up on the floor since quarter to two, in the makeshift futon my mom always puts out for my family when we visit. It’s comfortable. It’s warm. It’s not helping my pre-flight insomnia.

I can never sleep the night before flying overseas. It used to be excitement that kept me awake – a single guy, off to explore yet another foreign land, no responsibilities except for himself and even that was debatable. It’s different now. Now I fly with four other people, meaning five airplane tickets, meaning boo-koo bucks meaning I have to find the cheapest flight out there. Which leads the to unenviable prospect of another low-priced, high-tension Chinese airline experience.
 

The Plan: Limo from home (A) to Newark Airport (B). Fly to Raleigh-Durham (C). Fly to Washington Dulles (D). Fly to Tokyo-Narita. Total flight time: 17 hours. Total layover time: About 4 seconds. This should be interesting.

I’m excited to get back to Japan. I always am. But tonight it’s that unenviable potential for disaster that’s keeping me awake.

And this time I can’t even blame China.

Our return trip to Tokyo involves three flights: Newark to Raleigh-Durham, then up to Washington Dulles, then the big plane over the Pacific. Our first layover is a whopping thirty minutes. The second’s a luxurious sixty. One minor delay, one smart alec (Baldwin) on either of those first two flights and poof. We’re looking at fifty hours in the same underwear, I'm paying exorbitant late fees at the parking lot near Tokyo-Narita Airport, and I can add booking flights to the list of things the wife no longer trusts me with.

Last night I bought a case of Yuengling for the fridge in the basement, to replenish (half) what I drank over Christmas. I’d pour four of them down my throat right now except I have to drive my sister to the airport in an hour. This is also my fault, thanks to the deal I made with my mom’s husband after dinner yesterday, in a chocolate-induced funk of generosity.

“I’ll wake up and take sis to the airport at four-thirty,” I said through a mouthful of dark ganache and raspberry, “if you can be ready to follow us to the airport at six. Which you may not have to.”

 

He was over the moon with the Dutch caramel, he probably would have agreed to anything.

I knew he’d have to. Last year the limo company we hired sent over a freelancing mom with an SUV to take me, the wife, three kids and five hundred pounds of luggage (I weighed it) to Newark Airport. She took one look at that mountain of suitcases and hyper-taped cardboard boxes and pulled out her cell phone.

“Ain’t no way I’m gonna fit all this stuff,” she said to her dispatcher. “You gonna need a second car or something.”

Before I even had a chance to ask, my mom’s super-husband was grabbing his keys. “Put some of your stuff in my truck,” he said. “I’ll follow you to the airport.” I think he was kind of expecting it.

“Wait, no,” my mom protested in bathrobe and slippers. “This is the limo company’s responsibility!”

True. No time. Bye Mom, love you.

We’re using the same limo company this time. (“They’re really great,” my mom said for some reason. “And cheap!”)(That’s probably the reason.) So our three-flight circus should get off to a lively start.

I bury myself deeper under the futon blankets.

My alarm is set for 4:15 – approximately the time my wife will stop snoring.

The Previous Night, 8:00pm – I’ve got everyone’s clothes and the kids’ Christmas loot and a hundred pounds of miscellaneous crap all packed up and piled in the garage. My wife has the kids all bathed, brushed and in their pajamas. This has got to be a pre-flight record for us.

The wife is going to read to the kids and, if history holds true, fall asleep before they do. But my night is nowhere near over.

I still have to draft two travel articles I’ve been commissioned to not plagiarize. And I have to go buy a pair of trail running shoes. Yes, have to. Japan doesn’t stock a lot of size elevens. And trail running is an integral part of my Sanity 2017 program.

“Mom, can I use your car one last time?”

It takes me thirty minutes to drive to REI and trade a hundred and thirty bucks for a pair of Salomons. Across town at Willie’s Liquors it takes thirty seconds to trade another twenty dollars for a case of Yuengling. Back at mom’s, showered and caffeinated, I spend four hours researching and writing and uploading those two travel articles. For this I will be paid exactly what I just gave REI.

The fridge in the basement is humming, boring deeper and deeper into my consciousness as the clock ticks past 1:30.

Damn that raspberry ganache.

December 29 – 4:15am – I’m still awake when my alarm goes off. (Right on cue, my sleeping wife goes silent.) I pull my clothes back on and shuffle down to the kitchen – to find super-husband sitting at the table.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, code for I got up in case you couldn’t.

I pour coffee on my cereal as my sister gets ready.

5:00am. Outside Terminal C a stagnant river of brake lights casts a red glow on people pulling wheeled suitcases through the dark. The cars are backed up three deep where we sit, tapering to a bottleneck halfway up the hundred-yard drop-off area. At the far end the curb is empty.

Typical Jersey.

“This is fine right here,” my sister says, and jumps out of the car. “Thanks Kev!” she calls out as she yanks her bag from the trunk. “See you guys this summer!”

“You got it,” I yell back, though I had no idea we’d be seeing her this summer. The wife, I suspect, was busy making air travel plans for next year while I was out spending that ticket money on sneakers.

5:45am. Wife and boys are ready to go.

 

Daughter is pushing her oatmeal away, insisting our flight is not until tomorrow.

6:00am. Car shows up. Toyota minivan. Perfect if we could leave a suitcase and one kid behind. Our driver is sure we can pack everything in. I think he’s from a place where there are few traffic rules, no taxi regulations and no known phrase for maximum seating capacity. I appreciate his friendly fervor.

SuperStepdad ambles into action, car keys in hand. Mom says her good-byes from the garage and goes back to bed.

6:40am – Terminal C drop-off is now a four-lane logjam. “Go to the far end,” I say to my driver, who doesn’t look as comfortable with the chaos as he should, considering where (I imagine) he’s from. Maybe he doesn’t understand why people here keep waiting for their cars to come to a complete stop before jumping out.

I pop my seatbelt off and open the door as we’re still pulling up to the curb. (Mr. Minicab either doesn’t mind or doesn’t notice.) The side door opens automatically. And way too flippin’ slowly. I funnel my family out into the cold, polluted morning. “Stay on the sidewalk!” I tell my kids. They want to help with the bags. I want to help them not get hit by a car.

I’m pressing some cash into José’s hand (be honest, the chances are pretty good his name isn’t Sean) as our second car pulls up.

“Grandpa!”

“STAY ON THE SIDEWALK!”

6:43am – Through the glass walls of the terminal building I can see a bloated, snaking line of people and suitcases. Behind them the lights of the check-in counter beckon with all the charm of that lamp over the dentist’s chair.

Out here on the sidewalk there’s not a single abandoned luggage cart in sight. And I refuse to pay seven bucks to use one. This is mainly out of principal, although if the wife really is making plans to fly somewhere this coming summer I’m going to need that seven bucks.

My sons are standing shoulder-to-shoulder, hands on our wheeled suitcases, ready to take off running on their next ill-fated adventure. The wife is readying my daughter’s new three-wheeled all-terrain stroller (My Jeep, she says). She’ll balance my daughter’s walker on the Jeep’s pushbar, stick my daughter’s ladybug backpack in the net thing underneath, plop our daughter in the seat and sling her handbag over her shoulder.

That leaves me with two suitcases, a huge green duffel and five overstuffed boxes. And still no abandoned carts. My boys are on the starting line. My wife suddenly decides to pull out her camera. I want to put on my new Salomons and take off into the blackness.

“Help with your bags, sir?”

I look up. The voice is coming from a 6’4” 300-pound teddy bear dressed all in dark blue. He’s walking toward me, pulling behind him a luggage cart the size of a small flatbed trailer. I look at our luggage. I look at his flatbed. My mom’s husband is long gone.

“Let’s load ‘em up!” I say like he’s now my best friend. Which he is.

We roll through the massive revolving door and I turn toward that bloated snake. “Uh-uh,” he says quietly. “This way.”

I don’t know where this way goes but I tend not to say no to 300-pound bears.

This way leads far away from that snaking line, down to the far end of the floor and a row of check-in kiosks being used by exactly zero people. Behind the nearby counter three airline agents are hanging out, nothing to do but chat and sip coffee and hope nobody comes by to check in.

Did I say teddy bear? I meant angel.

Our 300-pound angel takes our passports and confirmation papers and taps his way through an automated check-in process that would have taken me until 2017 to figure out.

Did I say angel?

I hand the God of the Airport two carts’ worth of cash, shake his hand and wish him a happy new year. He smiles like he just put one over on me.

At the check-in counter our woman does her job in between sips of coffee and glances at her smartphone (facebook). Next to her a guy in blue slacks, a white dress shirt and no undershirt attaches long white stickers with codes for three airports to our ten bags and boxes. I get a weird shiver with every piece he launches onto the conveyor belt.

“You’re all set,” the woman sings as she hands us fifteen boarding passes.

I inhale a bit of her enthusiasm. For a guy who’s been awake for twenty-four hours and has another twenty-four to go, I feel pretty good. All checked in, bags on the way and plenty of time to get through security. Even the kids are doing great. Smooth sailing, at least for the immediate future.

“I’m hungry,” my daughter says.

 INTERMISSION 

For those not up to speed, my four-year-old daughter requires a walker to get around. Someday, we firmly believe, she will walk on her own like any other kid. Until then she’s got that walker and, thanks to the generosity of a college friend, her Jeep for when she runs out of steam.

When we fly we don’t check her walker and stroller with the rest of our luggage. We hold onto them; roll right up to the gate and all the way to the end of the jetway, three steps from the door of the plane. Only then do we fold our two contraptions up and lean them against the wall. And that’s that. When we step off the plane however many hours later there they are again.

On occasion we have to wait for them, but never more than a minute or two…

 PART TWO 

7:25am – I show the 20-year-old TSA guard boy all fifteen of our boarding passes. Not because I think he needs to see them all. I’m just trying to garner some sympathy so maybe he’ll point us toward some special express lane.

“Kind of flying all over the place, huh?” he says. His smile doesn’t contain any malice but I do sense a bit of derision. No matter how lowly a person’s position, the chance to laugh at someone will come along eventually. For this kid the chance probably comes along a lot.

“Yeah, this is going to be interesting” I say. And I pat my closest child on the head… and let out a long, exaggerated breath… and I wait...

“All right, have a nice flight. Flights, I mean.”

Punk. “Yeah, thanks.” And I turn away.

“Wait, excuse me,” he says.

And I turn back. Express lane here we come!

“Is that water?” He points to the plastic bottle in the tray of my daughter’s Jeep.

Crap. Are we really not allowed to take water on these short little shuttle flights? Seriously, if someone is going to go through the trouble and risk of blowing up a plane do you think they’re going to pick a puddle jumper to Raleigh-Durham?

I motion to the mass of people on line ahead of us. “We’ll drain them before we get to the front.” I pull two more waters from under the Jeep and hand them to my boys.

“They might let you bring them through,” he says. “At least one should be all right.”

I study the kid’s face. I don’t know if he’s being nice or if he’s messing with me. Either way I want to remember him.

The large female TSA agent at the front of the line wasn’t messing with anyone. “Toss that,” she tells me, pointing to my water then to the trash can over by the wall.

“Can we take just one, for all three kids?”

She doesn’t even look at me this time, she just jabs another finger at the can.

Saying TSA agents can be callous is no newsflash. (Note: I’ve come across plenty of nice ones. At least two.) But they’ve always been accommodating when they see I have to help my daughter walk through the metal detector.

 

Their decisions on dealing with her wheels have been less consistent. Today I have to fold up her walker and send it through the X-ray machine. They want me to put her Jeep through too, but even folded up it’s too big.

Solution, TSA Style: Make me and my daughter stand off to the side, along with my younger son just for the hell of it, while they temporarily confiscate the Jeep. They check it for explosives residue by wiping it down with those little acne cleansing pads which they analyze, one by one, in a machine that may or may not be plugged in. Then they push the Jeep aside and proceed to wave eighteen more people through the metal detector gate and right past us.

 

I think they forgot we were there. I remind one of them that we are, and that person has someone with medical gloves come over with more acne pads. She wipes our six hands with them and throws them directly into the trash. Another guy comes over to tell us to go get our stinkin’ Jeep out of the way.

They never wiped my wife or my older son for traces of acetylene or C-4. Is there some federal regulation that prohibits checking (ahem, profiling) entire families?

Rule 405.3.8(b)(7)(t): TSA agents, in the interests of guarding against hurting people’s feelings, including those suspected of ties to terror organizations and/or the Libertarian Party, must not subject to reasonable examination more than sixty percent of any one family, and within such family agents are to examine no more than one person old enough to assemble a pipe bomb and no fewer than two children too young to even hide a booger.

8:55am – At home I don’t like my kids drinking soda because of all the sugar. On a plane I don’t like them drinking soda because of all the throwing up. I can smell the stench just looking at my four-year-old chugging a can of Coke in her seat.

“Sorry guys, it’s still morning. Have apple juice. Or orange.” (Awwwww, Daaaad!…)

My wife is seated next to our daughter. The boys are right behind them, playing rather ominously with their barf bags. I’m across the aisle, next to a woman who seems about to die from a recurring state of disinterest until, half an hour into the flight, I open my mouth.

I wish I could remember what I said so I could make sure I never say it again. Because this woman who was just a second ago about ready to dissolve right into the seat cushion is suddenly alive and all irritated about her job and her mandatory meetings and the twin evils known as United Airlines and the Raleigh-Durham Airport.

“Nothing is ever on time with these people,” she says. “Ever.”

9:40am – My friendly armrest partner is now talking in intermittent fragments about her plans to visit Italy with her daughter. I’m checking the time and glancing out the window, hoping that’s North Carolina down there.

A click and a static buzz and the captain comes over the PA.

“We’ll be landing in about fifteen minutes, folks, which means we should be pulling up to our gate right about ten o’clock …”

Which gives us ten minutes to get off this plane and onto our next one.

There are 29 rows on the plane. We’re in Rows 27 and 28. In front of us then are 26 rows times four people who will no doubt pop up out of their seats and clog the aisle as soon as Captain Ten O’Clock turns off the seat belt sign. Why are people so eager to stand in a cramped aisle when they know – they know – they aren’t going anywhere?

I grab our back-of-the-bus flight attendant. (Not literally of course, this was back before Trump’s inauguration when such things were still unacceptable.) I tell her quietly about our predicament and ask if it would be possible to let us slip off the plane first – or at least not 105th to 109th out of 116.

 

She says she’ll see what she can do.

By the time she’s buckled in for our descent, up there at the front of the plane, facing all those people dying to clog the aisle, it’s clear she will be doing nothing.

10:04am – Captain Inchalong dings off the seat belt sign and a hundred and eleven people jump up like the plane is on fire – which I wish it was. We’d get off the plane a lot faster.

Walker and Jeep are noticeably not there when we step off the plane. “Maybe up at the gate,” I tell the wife. I don't think so, I just want to move everyone closer to our connecting gate which, it turns out, is thirty seconds away for someone herding a family through a crowd of people who won't move because they're all staring at their phones. I leave my family at our new gate and tear back to the first one - eight-seconds running full-speed through a crowd of startled people.

Outside in the light drizzle Larry LuggageHandler is walking back and forth, hauling our wheels and two other people’s strollers to the bottom of the metal stairs leading up to the jetway. I try to open the door and yell out to him “Just put the walker and the Jeep on that plane over there!” It would save him a bit of effort.

Apparently that type of thing is against United’s “Let the Parents Sweat it Out” policy.

I shouldn’t say that. The two women checking us in for our second flight are wonderful. They even let my wife and kids board as I run back and forth (twice) to get our walker and then our Jeep, thus ensuring that at least 80% of us will be getting to Washington Dulles on time.

11:00am – We’re flying over Virginia. I hope. The kids didn’t put up any real stink about the juice thing on the first flight, but they’d been so good for the six hours they’d been up (five and a half for Little Miss Oatmeal) and I didn’t want to risk ruining it so I caved to their pleadings for a round of Cokes.

The wife is over there dozing off. I don’t understand. She’ll lie awake all night worrying about whether the kids need to bring spoons to school for lunch yet she can sleep in the middle of this ongoing catastrophe in the making? Doesn’t she know we still have another connection to make? At Dulles no less, which, according to the woman next to me (related to the woman next to me on the first flight I reckon), is the Worst. Airport. Ever.

I hope I sit next to a Japanese woman on the flight to Tokyo. Their negativity is so much nicer to listen to.

11:40am – That flight to Tokyo is scheduled to depart from Gate C28. At least it was when we got our fifteen boarding passes and parted ways with our Newark Airport teddy bear angel god. I’m looking out the window as Captain SpeedLimit taxis around in the rain.

Terminal C! For the love of God, PARK IN TERMINAL C!

Or Terminal D, which is in the same long skinny building. Parking at Terminal A or B would mean we have to ride across the tarmac in an amphibious-looking monster truck whose eight wheels are bigger than the plane’s.

We’re in the second-to-last row again (though the kids are on the right side of the aisle so that’s exciting). I don’t even bother grabbing the flight attendant. If worse comes to worst and we pull up to Terminal B I’ll push the family out the jetway door and down the metal steps so we can intercept the guy with our walker and Jeep and make a run for it across to Terminal C.

Though that probably goes against another United “policy”.

12:00 noon, in the lounge outside Gate C28 – My kids are going bananas in anticipation of our flight home to Japan: thirteen hours of unmitigated in-flight entertainment and Cokes as far as they are concerned. My wife is watching them from one of the four seats she’s commandeered for us. She looks well-rested. I’m good with that.

We’ve got thirty minutes till boarding. I still can’t believe we made it. I look at my family, so comfortable and care-free in the moment. I’m happy for them. I’m happy for me, though the morning has gone well in spite of me, not because.

Well maybe I did keep one or more of my kids from throwing up.

Of course we’re still a long way from Tokyo, where we’ll pick up our luggage (I hope) and hop into our van for the four-hour trip to my wife’s parents’ home in Fukushima.

If there’s Yuengling on the plane my wife’s driving.