The Wobblin' Sprocket

Our plane left NY about an hour and a half late (10:45 instead of 9:15). We were all boarded and ready to go at the scheduled departure time so I’m not sure what the hold up was. They never announced a reason. It was snowing and they sprayed the plane with de-icer. That took a few minutes. And there were 20 planes ahead of us in line to get off. That took some time too. Anyway, I am glad we are now off the ground and on our way. Most of the people on the plane are Chinese. The guy next to me is headed for mainland China to a town I didn’t recognize the name of. He is fidgeting with something pretty much all the time. He has asked me for the time about 4 or 5 times and then he really surprised me by asking whether we were flying direct to Hong Kong. Most people would know that before they got on the plane. On top of that the screen in front of us has shown our route with a little tiny plane progressing over a map all the way from NYC to HK about 30 times before he asked. Apparently satisfied with my answer, he has taken his shoes and socks off and is now barefoot.

The flight is 14 hours. That is a fair junk of time. I think I miscalculated where I will be when the Superbowl is played. I won’t be on a plane. I will be in Hanoi. I imagine I can find a place to watch the game there. There won’t be American style chicken wings to eat while viewing but there might be plenty of beer. They are big beer fans in Vietnam. And instead of chicken wings they might have those little itsy, bitsy whole birds that are about as big as your thumb. You pull the head off and then eat everything else. I know that sounds gross but they are actually pretty good. they are stuffed with something.

Time to hunker down. I am not a good plane sleeper, but occasionally, if I find the right position, I can dose off. Wouldn’t it be great if I were to doze off and find myself in Hong Kong? I wish.

My guess is that everyone back in the DC area will have a hard time getting out. The problem is generally not the resumption of airport operations and flights. It’s the fact that flights after a shutdown are often full and the next available seat can be 3 or 4 days out. We will find out soon enough.

Good luck to everyone back home battling the effects of the storm!

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Well, in the end, Chantal and I both made it out of DC on the same flight. It was snowing pretty good when we left so I think it was a very good thing that we got out when we did.   It avoided scurrying around trying to put together a Plan B.  If it snows as much as is forecast, Plan B would likely be watching the Superbowl at home.  That wouldn’t have bothered me too much, but it would have meant that Chantal probably would not be able to trek up to the top of Mt. Fansipan in Vietnam.  Of course, she might not be able to to do that anyway, but at least now she has a shot at it.  It’s her birthday today, so the travel gods have been good.

We are lugging three bikes around with us.  We have our two travel bikes plus a bike frame for Mr. Joe in Vietnam.  My original intention was that we would put all our stuff on a plane and have it checked all the way through to Hanoi.  As it is now, with a layover night in NY, we will have to retrieve our all our stuff and recheck it tomorrow.  That is a definite pain in the rear.  The frame is in a full size bike box.  While it’s not heavy, it’s unwieldy and difficult to manage with everything else.

I unlocked (and “jailbroke”) my iPhone this morning.  Yeah I know.  It voids the warranty.  But I would like to use the phone when I am overseas.  When I was in Canada a few weeks ago, I had a small taste of the kind of rates AT&T charges for roaming (it might be the otheer carrier with the high rates…I am not sure).  The bottom line is that if you want to use the phone overseas (which I do) there really is no choice.  It took all of 5 minutes to do it.  Supposedly, I can reset it back to the original locked state.  I will do that when I return in March.

A few hours later…

We made  it to JFK without a problem.  We stashed the bike at left luggage.  I didn’t think that there were any left luggage places at any US airports (for security reasons).  It is very  convenient so I was glad to find it.  An airport worker told me that the fee for leaving a bag was nominal.  It turned out to be $16 dollars per day.  I suppose in NY there is a different meaning to the word nominal.  In Bangkok, it’s $2.50.  

We hadn’t made a hotel reservation in NY since we weren’t entirely sure the plane was going to leave DC.  We were therefore in need of finding a place when we arrived.  The service desk at the airport said their least expensive room near the airport was $170,  We ended up using our cell phones to bid on a room via Priceline.  We ended up at the Hilton for $97 total with taxes which, with the benefit of hindsight, was a very good deal indeed.

I am posting this to the blog using Posterous.  We will see how that works out.  You create an email and then send it to a posterous email account from which it is reposted to wherever you choose.  The advantage of this is you can create your post offline and then use email to easily post when you have internet access.  The big question is how well it will be formated and whether images make it through.  If this looks like hell you’ll know why.

I am tossing in this picture just to see how if it makes it through….

Posted via email from Bob’s posterous