Strangers in a Strange Land: Day .5

All we wanted to do was travel 8000 miles across the Pacific Ocean from a small town in California to the biggest city in the world in China. All it would take was four people, their luggage, two days and three airplane flights. How hard could it be?

In the hours leading up to the trip, the fear that some part of our voyage would go awry nagged at me like the constant, low hum of a nearby high-voltage power line. Our journey had so many moving parts, it seemed to me inevitable that some gear on our Rube Goldberg-esque travel machine would slip a cog. Still, I did everything I could think of to ensure smooth passage. We saw the doctor and got our shots. I dutifully visited the Chinese consulate and obtained the requisite visas well in advance. I called Travelocity to reconfirm our reservation. I e-mailed our China hosts with our arrival information. In the hours ahead of our nighttime departure on March 31, the only elements that incomplete and beyond my immediate control were the amount of work I had to get done before I could leave the office in good conscience, and seat assignments for the trans-Pacific leg of the trip.

The night before we left, we settled on a strategy of checking two suitcases and carrying on a suitcase, handbag and a backpack -- pretty compact packing for a family of four on a 10-day trip. Knowing that we could do laundry while in China allowed us to dramatically reduce the amount of clothing we had to take along with us. I left for work early on the 31st with a firm idea of what I had to accomplish at the office, knowing that we were completely packed but for a few last-minute items which we carefully identified on checklists. My personal schedule called for me to leave work at 4:30 to be home by 5:00, so that we could leave home by 5:30 in order to get to the airport by 6:30 ahead of our 9:30 p.m. flight to Los Angeles. Over the course of the day, I did well to complete the tasks I had set out for myself, only falling behind by a pleasingly precise 30 minutes. The dash home took the prescribed 30 minutes, and the final packing and home shutdown took another scheduled 30 minutes. On the stroke of 6:00 p.m., almost exactly as we planned, we were underway.

The variables of packing, getting work done, and leaving for the airport had been successfully dispatched. No hiccups, but my low-grade anxiety did not abate. Rain had turned the Bay Bridge into a quagmire, turning what might be a 40 minute trip into something much longer. As I continually evaluated them time required to do everything from drive to the airport, to taking the shuttle bus from long-term parking to the ticket agent, to the lines at security, I decided that we were better off approaching SFO from the south off the San Mateo Bridge, especially since this meant we were could avoid the jammed up Caldicott Tunnel (traffic maps on the iPhone were essential for this analysis -- these are the good old days). This meant starting our trip on the local canyon road. In the rain.

Slippery (but very familiar) canyon roads and rainy freeways successfully behind us, we pulled into the long-term parking garage shortly after 7:00 p.m. Airport signs are never so difficult to decipher as when you think there's a chance you could be running late. I had never been to a long-term parking area before, which is quite some distance from the airport itself and is marked with only moderately helpful signage. Nevertheless, we made it, and took a picture of our parking space so that we could find our car again. We hauled our modest supply of luggage to the shuttle, which showed up agreeably promptly. Several more potential hazards, avoided.

The agent at the United ticket counter finally give me the scare I had been waiting for. In scanning our itinerary, he noted that his system showed us getting to Shanghai via Seoul, and returning via the same route, but without the essential Shanghai to Seoul leg. Because those flights were on another airline, neither he nor I could do anything about the apparent gap in our itinerary; he just left it for me to worry about. For the same reason, he could not reserve our seats on the transpacific flights, advising us to do so once we got on the ground in Los Angeles, a little less than two hours before the overseas flight. Just to add to the fun, his printer quit the middle of printing our boarding passes. After a few anxious moments, the printer sprang back to life, spitting out the missing fourth ticket.

At long last, we were in the airport, he had our boarding passes, our bags were checked (and within legal weight limits -- another anxious moment dismissed), and we had plenty of time for dinner. We proceeded to dine at the slowest seafood restaurant on the West Coast. By the time we finished our simple meal (during which I re-reconfirmed our full itinerary with Travelocity), we only had a few minutes until we were scheduled to board our flight to Los Angeles. At least that short flight would be uncomplicated.

Or so I thought, until I pulled out the boarding passes in the gate area. When the ticket agent’s printer choked on our boarding passes, it printed an extra copy of a pass it had already printed before it took its smoking break. Interestingly, neither the ticket agent, nor I, nor the two TSA operatives at the security checks (who had to compare the boarding passes with our passports) noticed that Cheryl had two boarding passes and I didn't have one. As my stomach sank standing there at the gate, seemingly miles from the ticket agent, knowing that I would have to figure out a way to get on the plane even as the first boarding group was being called, a perverse sense of satisfaction washed over me -- my anxiety was justified! Something went wrong!

The gate agent, besieged with business travelers trying to catch the last overbooked flight to LA, was able to solve my problem quickly, issuing my boarding pass as our boarding group was being called. Our three carry-ons stowed safely, all we needed was a timely departure to ensure that we would not eat into too much of our almost two-hour layover in Los Angeles. After all, we still did not have seat assignments for the 13-hour trip to Seoul, or the 90-minute jump from Seoul to Shanghai. As I tried to convince myself that families of four routinely check in 90 minutes before trans-Pacific flights, the low buzz of anxiety resumed its customary resonance. Really, what could possibly go wrong?