Even though this reads like three days it was one of those really long travel days that feels like a single day. On Tuesday, Andy worked until about noon and I worked until around 2:30 PM and at 3 PM, the taxi we had requested arrived at our house to pick us up and take us to the airport. The driver was chatty and told us that someone had painted mustaches on the large pictures of some of the athletes in the Special Olympics. We all agreed that the act was such a shame and then the driver moved to new topics to keep up the conversation.
We arrived at the airport earlier than we needed to for our 5:15 PM flight after easily checking into our flights and getting through security. I started killing the time with Scrabble on my iPhone and Andy bought and started reading a magazine on secret societies from the National Geographic. My parents arrived at the gate about 45 minutes later and my mom immediately started eating the sandwiches they had packed for the trip. I declined the offer of a sandwich as I had thwarted my pregnancy hunger pangs with a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch and a frozen burrito for an afternoon snack.
The flight to San Francisco was unmemorable. I read much of the flight. I had approximately 150 pages left in the Grapes of Wrath which I had been reading since our trip to Aruba and was determined to finish it before we arrived in Fiji since it is NOT good beach reading, even though it is a fantastic book. Next we arrived in San Francisco and speed walked to our gate which was already boarding to LA. Another unmemorable flight and reading before arriving in LA. When I say unmemorable, I honestly cannot remember anything about them, where I sat, who was sitting around me and it was only a little more than 24 hours ago that I was on that flight. Strange, my memory must be really bad or else so many other things have happened since then that those unmemorable flights were overwritten for space or something.
We arrived at the LAX airport. For the record, I despise the LAX airport. We will plan entire trips around avoiding LAX because to use a word we all used often in Shanghai, it is a clusterf*!k (or CF for short). It didn’t disappoint and lived up to its CF reputation. We disembarked the plane and tried to figure out where we needed to go. Nothing was clear so we asked a woman who worked at the airport and drove one of those indoor vehicles with the horn and flag that are often driving down the middle of any given airport concourse. She told us to take a right and then a left, go down the elevator and then outside and catch the “A” bus to the Tom Bradley International Concourse. We took a right and then a left and then entered an incredibly stinky elevator that apparently someone or something had just shit in that had only partially been wiped up. We found ourselves at street level looking for a bus that wasn’t coming. We asked another person who looked like they worked at the airport and they told us how to locate the bus we were in search of. Ten or so minutes later, the bus came and we took it to the international concourse.
We found the check-in desks for Air Pacific and were immediately helped. The woman looked at me and asked me how far along I was. I responded that I was seven months. Since we had already mentioned that I was interested in upgrading to business class, I thought she was being nice and might upgrade me for free. Nope, she asked if I had a doctor’s note to fly. I told her that I didn’t think it was necessary until eight or nine months but that I did have my doctor’s permission to fly. She gave me a form to fill out that said it was my responsibility if something happened to me. We asked her a couple of times if I could upgrade to business class and she said that it was $750 with this strange look on her face like nobody would be crazy enough to upgrade at that cost. I was thinking more like she was, that it couldn’t possibly be worth it. Andy insisted and upgraded me to the first row in the plane. I thought that it seemed like a waste of money but was also grateful.
We grabbed some food, navigated through a long security line with an unusually large number of travelers in wheelchairs, bought a universal plug adapter and went to our gate which was scheduled to be boarding any minute.
The plane was delayed 30 minutes so I did one last check of my work email via the iPhone. Andy commented that I better not be doing work email and asked me if I was going to be able to make it a week with out the iPhone. Finally it was time to board and I said good bye to my family and took my place in seat 1K. I had a window seat and the bummer of it was that the seat next to me was open and Andy wasn’t in it. In retrospect, I should have asked if he could come down. I needed him later in the flight.
Business class was of course nice but definitely didn’t feel worth $750. The chairs were wonderful and I quickly fell asleep after takeoff especially since the dinner was delayed due to turbulence and the seat belt sign. The flight attendant woke me up probably an hour later and asked if I wanted dinner. Of course. I chose a cold salmon with some sort of soy beans and a cheesecake with a layer of fruity gelatin on top. I scraped off the gelatin coating but other than that the food was pretty good. Not as good as United’s business class dinner and not $750 good, but good. It was a bummer I couldn’t enjoy the nice Australian wine list or the port they offered.
After dinner I read for awhile and then I believe fell asleep. I woke up with a full bladder to turbulence. I noticed the seat belt light was on and then went off. I was going to get up to use the bathroom as it is quite unpleasant to have a full bladder with a baby sitting on it especially in turbulence, but the plane felt too jerky and I was afraid I might fall on my way to the bathroom. I decided to wait it out as turbulence usually doesn’t last that long. Boy was I wrong. An hour later, my situation had become dire as my bladder was ready to explode and the turbulence had not let up and instead become worse. Normally turbulence doesn’t bother me, but perhaps due to the duration of it and the state of my bladder, this did. It sounded like the plane was using all of the force of the engines to barrel through the turbulence and there were often large drops of the plane. I started to become scared and heard the woman in the seat behind me crying. As time continued to pass, I became more and more scared and noticed that my body had started shaking. I tried to calm myself down with rationalizing that it was not that bad and that it was going to be okay, but at this point I was really wishing that Andy was next to me to downplay the situation and tell me why the plane was not going to crack open with the overexertion. At the worse of it, I not only practiced a bit of yoga breathing but I even prayed.
“Dear God. If you exist, cool. Um, can you please do the following three things: Most importantly, allow this plane to land successfully in Fiji. Also, please don’t let me go into labor on this plane or actually during the whole trip. Finally, can you please make this turbulence stop oh and one last thing, please God turn off the fasten seatbelt light so I can go to the bathroom. Thanks.”
I began to calm down and noticed that a man had gotten up to go to the bathroom. I followed his lead and walked as fast as I could to the toilet. What a relief!!! After that, I was able to deal with the rest of the turbulence and at some point the turbulence stopped, the fasten seatbelt sign went off and I fell asleep.
I woke up probably a few hours later feeling hungry (not uncommon for me.) I walked back to the area where the flight attendants congregate and prepare meals and I asked the guy who was there if I could have some of the cheese and crackers snacks that were mentioned in the dinner menu. I normally would have just eaten the snacks I brought for myself, but I was still looking to get the $750 out of the business class upgrade. He said he would put some snacks out and five minutes later there was a tray with cheese, crackers, pretzels and other miscellaneous items. I had a couple of cheese/cracker combos and started into the final pages of my book. About an hour later, breakfast was served and unlike my loved ones in economy, I had yogurt and granola, fruit, toast with jam, a cheese omelet, veggies, a small chicken sausage and a piece of Canadian bacon. It was about eight hours into the flight and I finally conceded that the $750 was worth it. The seat almost completely reclined and I could configure it into a perfect pregnant woman sleeping configuration where my typical rib ache did not occur.
The final pages of The Grapes of Wrath were a little disturbing. Rose of Sharon, who had been pregnant the entire book, had a baby that was not fully formed and was not alive probably due to the malnourishment she and her family had experienced. Throughout the book, I kept waiting for things to get better for the Joad’s, but it never did. The book was really well written and I am glad that I read it though. I just find that I have less tolerance for bad news and sadness since I became pregnant.
After nearly eleven hours in the aircraft, my first prayer was answered and we finally arrived in Fiji around 6 AM.
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