Hong Kong Phooey
Dave says:
Well folks, we actually left. I know, I know - after months of talking about it, planning it and stressing about it, we finally boarded an aircraft to leave. Only to then have to unboard that same aircraft because of an instrument malfunction. I am, however, somewhat gald the malfunction was detected before we were airborne. Instruments are one of those things in aircraft that sound as important as they probably are. Beverage carts are the exception to that whereas not sounding important to safe flight are actually vital to the safe operation of this passenger. “Duty free” is niether an important word or function in aviation and I wish they’d stop interrupting my movie in repeated attempts to convince me otherwise. However, I digress (and likely will continue to over the next 364 days ( we crossed the date line and lost a day ( which we’ll never get back because we’re always going to heading west))).
So, 90 minutes late leaving Seattle for Vancouver. No problem because we had 180 minutes between landing in Vancouver and transfering to our Hong Kong flight and now we have 90. Like I say, no problem. However, avid readers of our travel journels may wish to cast their minds back to our New Zealand jaunt when we were also delayed leaving Seattle and made our connecting flight with literally only minutes spare and then had to suffer through lost luggage syndrome at the other end. History repeats itself, its a fact - your reading another of our travel blogs detailing delayed flights from SeaTac only confirms this fact. You know, we know it - there’s a good chance this isn’t going to work out well.
I now start a new paragraph to build suspense and for further dramatic effect will tell you that upon our arrival in Canada we waited for nearly thirty of those precious ninety minutes for our bags to ascend triumphantly from the bowels of baggage handling hell and spin in exhaulted glory on the carousel of hope. But they didn’t and time waits for no man or woman so off we trot to the nice people who track lost bags. They say its OK because our bags are “ramp loaded” all the way to Hong Kong. This means we didn’t need to wait and they are already on the plane. Fine - not what we were told at Seattle but… But, before I could finish that last sentance the nice lost baggage lady informs us we’ve missed our Hong Kong flight anyway. I splutter, Sarah warms up her finest snarl and History comes wandering over to tap us on the shoulder and exclaim how nice it is to see us again and how we must stop meeting like this whilst waiting to catch connecting international flights. But out the corner of my eye I notice History swerve to his right and head towards another couple that look just like us but I’m sure are heading to somewhere more difficult to make up for than Hong Kong. The nice baggage lady has since realized the flight has been delayed and everything is going to be fine. Great, wonderful. We head to the gate remarking in a cheery manner that its now nearly 3am, six hours since we arrived at SeaTac and we could have driven to Vancourver and back again in the time it’s taken us to get this far.
The flight to Hong Kong is LOOOOng. 13 earth hours whaich at 37000 feet is 130 flight hours, I slept nearly 7 (or 70)Â of those 130 (I sleep well sitting up; I had lots of practice at school). On Cathy Pacific flights they think Ramen Noodles in a cup is a great mid-flight snack. Lots of people ate them too. I tried to multiply the milligrams of sodium in each foam cup by the number of consumers (a 747 holds about 360 people) to get an idea of how much salt that is. I then pontificated if there was enough weight of salt to effect the fuel efficiency of the aircraft. Between that and a rather entertaining crossword (11 across was GoodyTwoShoes), I managed to use up the remainging 123 flight hours.
So - Here we and our bags are in Hong Kong. We’ll tell you all about that in another thrilling installment because its time for me to sleep. I’ve been up since Monday (it’s now Wednesday) and I’m quite tired. Besides, you’ve managed to reach the end of this long and erratic post so you could probably do with a nap too.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Hello you two. Reading Sarah’s comments made me emotional. Anyone who has been to HK will have been able to vicariously visit through her words. Damien is in Dublin so I’m here alone reading your news.
It occurred to me that when I was in Hong Kong I had the biggest feet and breasts on the Island. I know this because horrible little children (not in any particular type of foot wear)would gasp, point and pull at their embarrassed parent’s sleeves as I walked past. I became blushed and finally retreated like the British.
I love that I know what you’re smelling.