January 9
And so it begins, as many trips do: at an airport. My adventure to Japan for two weeks might be said to begin the night prior, as last minute packing intensified, but the fact is that the reality of the trip only struck me full force when I stepped into the Kalamazoo County Airport.
Kalamazoo. My hometown, home city of but 100,000 (how large had that seemed in my youth!), home since I was 4, that is for the past 14 years. The county airport was quite small, but one terminal with a scant five gates and a few airlines sending planes to the nearest hubs in Chicago or Detroit. I walked in, luggage in hand, and rushed towards the check-in counter. No one was there. I looked around the United desk in vain, but could find no one who could help me. An airplane captain in full regalia, presumably for another flight, stepped in line behind me, luggage in hand. Espying a silver bell upon the desk, I rang it and waited.
The door behind the United desk opened, and out came a man, looking at me hastily. He quickly checked in my baggage and myself, and admonished me, "You will want to check in earlier in Tokyo, because if you come this late they'll laugh you out of the airport." With that said, he wished me a good trip.
I pocketed my passport and boarding pass and turned and hugged and kissed Mom, who had since parked the car and come to see me off. Since the plane was departing in mid-morning, Dad wasn't able to come because of work, but he had given me a hug beforehand. I walked over to X-ray scanner, eyeing the guards in full military uniform, and passed my backpack, Palm and cell through the scanner, then with a final kiss and hug, walked through myself. I remembered, perhaps a tad wistfully, the days before September 11th, when family had been permitted into the gate area. Now, those days were gone, perhaps forever... that remains to be seen.
Thinking that I might be late, I waved goodbye to Mom and set off for the gate -- not a very long walk, but one behind a glassless wall and thus symbolizing the beginning of my temporary separation from home on this endeavor to Japan.
When I arrived at the gate area for gate 4, which also served gates 3 and 5, I looked about in consternation for there was not an airline employee to be seen -- indeed, there was no one but a few weary looking passengers sitting in chairs arranged as a bench. Hastily and beginning to worry that I had missed my flight, I asked them if they had seen any airline personnel lately. Their reply dimmed my hopes: "No, not for a long while." Turning away from them towards the door that led to the plane, I looked out the window that was embedded in the door across the cement pavement and saw that there was no one at the plane either.
Had I missed my flight? Turning again to the other passengers, I asked a second question, perhaps one more carefully phrased than my initial inquiry: "Has the flight to Chicago finished boarding?"
A lady sitting on the chair-bench looked up and answered with a half-hearted dull laugh, "No, it hasn't even started." Relieved, I thanked her and the others who volunteered their answers to my questions and retired to lean against a wall to await the employee that would allow us to board. I mused a moment, thinking how such casual interactions between humans convey important information, before glancing down at my boarding pass and seeing thereupon imprinted, "Boarding 10:25 AM." A glance at my watch showed that it was but 10:23. I had had nothing to worry about.
Time rolled around, and soon afterwards, the same airline employee who had checked me in came down the hallway leading to the gate area, trailed by an assistant. He began to check people in, but the assistant chose me for a bag check and another metal detector scan. Perhaps I looked suspicious in a black trench coat and black hat. In any case, as he unzipped and re0zipped the numerous pockets of my backpack, we chatted a bit, and once he was done, he wished me luck and fair fortune in Japan. Then, the original employee who had checked me in smiled and said, "I just checked you in a few minutes ago, go ahead and board." And so I walked out of Kalamazoo County Airport and across the cement towards the plane that would bear me to Chicago.
My assigned seat, 6A, was changed by the stewardess to 12C, for no reason that I could discern. I even favored the change, for the small lake hopper jet was not even half-full, and 12C landed me in the last row, in the middle, with essentially unlimited legroom. And at 6' 2", I find that I will take whatever legroom I can get.
The plane soon took off, and in the course of the flight, I made way to finish Quest for Love by Elisabeth Eliot, and indeed, by the time we touched down in Chicago, I was but 4 pages away from the end, having only the Conclusion to read. I found the book an invigorating and heartening read, as well as a gripping one. I had only taken a break from reading on the short flight (some 45 minutes, meaning that I arrived in Chicago literally before I left, because of the Eastern to Central time zone shift) to snap a photo of Chicago's skyline wreathed in a morning mist through a grimy plane window.
Once on the ground and in O'Hare, I found a terminal display and proceeded to locate the gate from which I would depart to Tokyo, with the rest of Operation Cherry Blossom, namely Mrs. Rene Medlin, from the US Army Research Office, and Ms. Debra Hsiung, fellow student winner of the award. The aged cathode ray tubes, with the beams of electrons flickering every so often, revealed that the magic letter and number pair was C16. In other words: quite a hike, for I had landed in the "F" section of the terminal.
I set off, following the clearly labeled signs through the maze of passageways and glass corridors that make up O'Hare, the largest airport in the world. Finally, after about 10 minutes of walking, I glanced a bit long at a Starbucks, perhaps musing upon commerciality in every aspect of American life; or maybe musing on that some tea (for coffee is not to my taste, as of now) would be nice to drink. In any case, as soon as I passed the Starbucks I realized that the helpful blue signs, suspended in the air above, no longer had any mention of the C concourse to which I was headed. I backtracked a moment and then saw that I had needed to make a left and descend down a staircase to go towards the concourse.
Correcting my route, I did so, and as I patiently waiting for the moving staircase to descend, taking a brief respite from my walk, I noticed that one of the passengers a few yards ahead seemed familiar, though she did not face me. Why, the thought crossed my mind, she looks quite a bit like Debra. I had first met her some eight months before, in May 2001 at the Intel International Science Fair in San Jose, California. We had then kept in touch online and had a multifaceted correspondence. In any case, she -- or the person I thought was Debra -- was now on the moving walkway, quite a ways ahead. I stretched my legs once I got off the moving stairway and soon was close behind, able to be quite sure of my initial guess. And so, before either of us ventured onto the second moving walkway of the three that led to Concourse C, I called our her name, though my voice rose at the end, as if it were a question (I was not entirely sure even then), "Debra?"
She turned and recognition set in fully for the both of us. We soon made our way to the gate, and found some seats for which to await the boarding call and also the appearance of Mrs. Rene Medlin from the Army. Additionally, we took the time to talk, for once not over Instant Messenger but actually in person.
My cell ringing temporarily interrupted our conversation, and I answered it to find that it was Mrs. Rene Medlin. I wandered out to the front of the gate area, and there beheld her with a sign aloft -- though she joked that perhaps we should have been the ones holding the sign aloft for her. She said she had sprinted all way the from her connecting flight and made it to the gate. She came back and introduced herself in person to Debra and we all talked for a while. I, coming to Chicago from Kalamazoo, had had the shortest flight, while both Mrs. Medlin and Debra had to endure longer times airborne, as they came from North Carolina and Texas, respectively.
Finally, in both English and Japanese, the gate attendant announced that boarding would begin with the rows furthest back. All of us had compared tickets, and found we sat close together, though Debra was a few rows ahead (she had connected with American and had checked in later than us). Thus, we waited until all rows were called for boarding before embarking, though the wait was only lengthened thanks to a boarding pass machine breaking down temporarily. This occurrence prompted a curious message over the PA that the "boarding machine" was broken, causing me to think of an automatic boarding machine that would pick up and people and drop them into their respective seats on the plane, perhaps to speed the delays that so often plague airlines. My mind dismissed the idea, though perhaps it might make do for a strange science fiction plot -- if it had not already been used for such a tale.
In any case, we boarded.