It’s a smooth flight on a bright clear day. All of my anxieties have subsided and I’m enjoying the start of my Tokyo adventure. So I’m on the first flight
From San Diego to Seattle. There’s still snow on the mountains we’re crossing over. 8 am here. Local time in Tokyo 21:00.
The flight morning went smoothly as well. I booked my airport ride through Tiger Limousine Service. Nervous about them finding and getting to our house at 5 a.m. I’d called during the week to confirm they had my reservation and a driver for me. No worries he assured me.
Sure enough I received a text last night saying “this is Mike and your drivers name is Sam, he will be there on time tomorrow morning.” And he certainly was. In fact he whipped me over to the airport so swiftly, by 5:21 a.m. we were exiting onto Hawthorn Street.
Incidentally my driver was Chaldean. Conversing once we made the timely airport exit, he said he’d moved here from Iraq 🇮🇶 12 years ago. I asked him what Bagdad was like. He said it’s a lot like Phoenix. Very hot up to 120 degrees in July – September. He said it’s very expensive and can cost $600,000 to buy a 400 square foot apartment. There’s a lot of development going attracting immigrants from neighboring Egypt 🇪🇬 and Lebanon 🇱🇧 and they have taken in Serbian refugees.
But I digress. The point I was getting at is how easy, swift and effortless my departure was. After that amazing Limousine shuttle service I zipped through Delta Airlines Check in. Using my TSA Pre-Check privileges I fast-laned it through the security checkpoint. Finding a vast area of open seating I settled down to write in my journal as I passed the time until departure.
Once it got closer to boarding time I moved closer to gate 45 where my Seattle flight was departing from. As they started announcing boarding groups stoked was I that I was in Zone 3, which meant I got to board third out of eight groups. It was DEFINITELY worth the slight upgrade.
On the plane I am seated right behind the first class cabin. The seat between me and my seat mate is empty. We were served pre snacks before the main cabin snacks. And then we were served snacks again with the main cabin snackage. So far, very good.
My seat mate just happens to be taking the same flight from Seattle to Tokyo. Then heading in to Okinawa. He’s a retired Navy, now contractor deep sea diver. Interesting stuff.
Tuesday 4 June, 2024
