Translation: The trip and the first day!
I was first able to travel via the airlines when my senior class headed out to San Diego nearly two years ago. Boarding that aircraft (I think it was a 727) was a exhilarating experience, considering the first and last time I had flown had been at least six years prior, and that was in a 1929 Ford Tri-Motor. I’ve also taken a couple of other trips in the last couple of years by way of the airlines, and had yet to experience anything go wrong.
Well, this would be the trip that things just weren’t intended to go as smoothly as one might hope with the airlines, but thankfully for us there would not be any serious implications involved a couple of delayed flights. On Saturday, my dad and stepmom drove Chris Jochum and I to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport to meet up with the rest of the team. (Chris will be driving back to Maryland upon our return, so things work out best for him if he leaves his car at our place.) The timing of our arrival at O’Hare was pretty cool. We were the first to pull up to the curb outside of Delta’s check-in, and within ten minutes, everyone else had arrived as well.
So we checked in, some of us said our goodbyes, and through security we went to wait for a couple of hours at the gate. Of course we had to grab some food (two McDonald’s double cheeseburgers for me). We played some cards and talked for awhile while awaiting our flight to Atlanta.
I went to China last year with the team from Maranatha, and it’s apparent that the dynamics of this team are vastly different. Last year, I walked up to the Midwest Express check-in and began talking to my fellow team members that I barely even knew. This team, it seems, already knows each other fairly decently, which probably has a lot to do with the preparation that has gone into the trip (specifically working as a team in regard to singing, but also even with ESL and basketball).
Our flight out of Chicago didn’t depart for around an hour after the scheduled time. That was fine; we knew that we would have a decent layover in Atlanta, and actually ended up having an even longer one than expected.
It seems as though I can only sit in a seat at the gate for so long. I need to be standing or moving or something. Well, Atlanta’s a big airport with, I think, six concourses. The concourses run parallel to each other with planes parked all around. Several of us (Ryan, Matthew H., Betsy, Leanna, and myself) eventually got to the point to where we had to do some moving, so we started hoping the underground tram that runs between the concourses. Our flight would leave out of a gate at Concourse E, so we headed all the way back to A and checked out some of the restaurants and stores. We worked our way back somewhat slowly, sometimes taking the tram and sometimes taking the moving walkway until we finally arrived back at gate E-4.
Well, we definitely wouldn’t be leaving from E-4. I’m still a little confused in regard to all of the details, but it seemed as though there was a plane sitting at the gate that probably wasn’t supposed to be. There were a lot of people trying to leave for a flight to Zurich from the same gate, and they weren’t having much success with that venture (it sounded as thought they’d been waiting way past their departure time). Eventually we were moved down the concourse to another gate where another airplane was sitting. That airplane had to be removed, ours transported from the hangar to the gate, and then prepped by the pilots and flight attendants along with being loaded with food and baggage and probably fuel.
Our scheduled departure was 8:40, but I think we left the ground somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 EST. The pilot said over the intercom that they arranged it so that our flight would be quicker that originally planned (we’d be flying at mach .81!). The flight attendants brought out the in-flight meals after close to an hour into the flight. Chris gambled on the pasta while I played safe with the roast chicken (Chris lost by the way).
I watched city after city of lights from my window seat on the left side. Oh, we were flying in a 676 in case anyone would be curious. We flew an MD-90 to Atlanta. Can’t forget those important details! Soon enough, on came the in-flight movie. I watched the first few minutes and then opted for some Season 2 episodes of The Office on my iPod nano. A couple hours later I was definitely ready for some sleep.
You know, sleeping in an economy class Boeing 767 window seat presents a bit of a challenge to a guy that’s 6’ 4”. It was a pretty restless night, and a couple of different times when I woke up and tried to stretch my legs out, I nearly brought on some Charlie horses.
I woke up enough once in the early morning to catch a glimpse of the beginning of the sunrise over the great Atlantic. Then I drifted back off to sleep and awoke again probably twenty minutes later to behold a more fully developed sunrise. Did I mention it was a pretty restless night in that window seat?
That window seat definitely paid off though as we flew over the Argentine topography north of Buenos Aires. The sun had continued to rise as the local time was now close to 9:00 a.m. (Buenos Aires time is one more hour ahead of EST). All across the landscape lay scattered blankets of fog, with the edges of some parts wisped away from the edges by the wind. One patch lay surrounding a river and underneath a bridge that span across it. Seeing the fog from the skies was a completely new sight for me.
Finally we came in near Buenos Aires, overflying some of the surrounding areas. The buildings just stretch on and on. Their taller buildings rose toward the sky some way off to the east. Soon enough we came into Los Aeropuertos Argentina and put down on Runway 11.
It is very late as I’m writing this, and I really want (and, yes, probably need) to grab some decent sleep before tomorrow. The place that we’re staying at though is great. Almost feels like a commune, in a good way. The property is large (probably 2-3 acres), gated, and fenced in. Oh, and the blinds are external, and metal, coming down almost like the ones in Will Smith’s recent movie “I Am Legend.”
