Airplane Ride

I wrote the following in my journal while we were on the plane:

Sunday, April 5, 2009

We are on our way to South Korea! We've been up and traveling now for 15 hours and Josh and I have had zero sleep on these planes thus far. Gabriel is doing ok, he hasn't slept much either, you can tell he is very tired... he just won't sleep. We still have 10-11 more hous of this flight until we're in Korea and then I don't know how many hours of driving after that... I think it's only supposed to be 1-2 hours from the airport. Everything so far has seemed to go by rather fast, I hope the rest does as well.

When we got to the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport this morning we ran into a not so pleasant stewardess who was supposed to help us check in... she instead gave us much more grief then help! She told us that we could not take on of our carry-ons on the plane as she felt it was a tad to large... but we could take one of our check-in bags instead. Well the check-in bag happened to be filled with a lot of liquid products so she said we had to transfer things from one bag to another. Well we started this oh so lovely task in front of the entire airport. I have to say, it is rather embarrassing to take your bra and other clothe items out of you luggage and present them to the entire world when you know all eyes are on you because you are the only one re-packing on the floor in the middle of the airport. Then the lady who was making us do all of this started to talk to her co-worker about how pathetic and dumb we are and she can't believe us... she was standing two feet away! I kept shooting her dirty looks but she seemed not to get the hint that I was mad... hmm! Anyway, then her and this other man started yelling at us to get our stuff out of the way. She really must not have been a smart woman to be picking on a mom with a crabby 7 month old at 5AM and there was the fact that we were waiting for her to give us our baggage tickets so we could put our bags in the scanner... maybe she was distracted by my ever so beautiful bras or possibly the sound of Gabriel crying the entire time was making her go nuts, either way she has made it onto my list of little evil green gremlins that suck the life out of other peoples lives.

So we made it to our plane at last, only to have a delay taking off because our entire plane was covered in ice. We were very worried about this because we only had a 45 minute layover in Chicago before our next plane was to take off. We finally took off about 25 minutes late... we were going to arrive after our next plane was already going to start boarding and we were still going to have to find the gate and check in because the first evil green gremlin couldn't get our seat number for that particular flight. Then our flight attendants couldn't give a hootie patootie about anything, much less the fact that many of us who had a 9:00AM flight could very well miss them. Oh, my favorite part of that flight was when Josh was holding his bag in his lap and the flight attendant came by and told him that he couldn't. She said that if the lady who was sitting by the window wanted to get out she wouldn't be able to if Josh was holding his bag. I looked down at my legs touching the seat in front of me and then at Josh's legs who were equally if not more squished then mine against the seats and though unless the woman by the window was going to magically become a leprechaun and shrink to make it through our maze of legs, there would be no way that she would be getting out whether Josh was holding his bag or not. But we just smiled and put the bag away and secretly thought that she was beginning to look a lot like the first green gremlin that we ran into that day. 

So we get to Chicago and run, well twaddle, as fast as we could to our next gate. I have to say that trying to hurry with a 20lbs 7 month old strapped to your chest, a 30lbs backpack on your back, a diaper bag in one hand and Gabriel's teddy in another is not an easy thing to do! Then of course there seems to always be the people that seem to walk like turtles directly in your path and don't get the hint to move over considering you've been on their butts for the last 5 minutes. So we get to our gate and are honestly sweating pretty bad, they call our name just as we get there and we go run to get our tickets and get in line to board the plane. As we board we are pleasantly surprised that because the lady in Minneapolis couldn't get us seats they had to give us what was left, which happened to be in business class right in the front so we had a lot of leg room! Yay, things are looking up!

The flight from Chicago to San Francisco was a lot better then the first. It got delayed at the beginning which was good for us because otherwise our twaddling through the airport would have been in vain. This flight was a bit longer, 4.5 hours but it was good and Gabe slept for like 30 minutes which was better then nothing. The layover in San Francisco was good too. Josh was sad when he found out how much airport food was, $7.00 for one cold turkey sandwich and $3.00 for a bottle of water... poor guy about had a heart attack!

We then boarded the plane to South Korea! One last plane to get on, only one more landing to suffer through (our least favorite part) and we could sleep! Well... maybe not sleep because even as I am writing this now with 7 hours left it still has not happened for me! And no, I am not a slow writer, I took a break =D

Anyway, when we got on the plane we were not seated together, there was an aisle and one chair separating us. I asked the guy I was sitting next to if he would switch with Josh, but Josh's seat was not ideal, so the guy said no. I secretly thought sucks to be you then, you get to deal with a crabby baby and now a crabby mommy! Then every time Gabe looked at the guy he would burst into tears, I think the guy felt bad and kept saying "he's crying because I'm not his Daddy!" I just agreed with the guy in hopes he would give in and move... no hope, apparently he didn't feel as bad as I thought! So when the person that was supposed to sit next to Josh showed up we figured we would ask him to switch with me. Well I didn't know this but when this guy next to Josh sat down he told Josh that he had requested his seat 30 days ago because he really wanted to sit there, so Josh didn't want to ask him to move because he felt bad about it. Well across the aisle I kept motioning to Josh to ask so he finally did. The guy didn't say much, he looked at me and Gabriel was crying, then just grabbed his stuff to switch. I turned to my switching partner and said thank you and sat down in my new seat. Then Josh told me about him wanting his original seat for the last 30 days and then I felt really bad about sitting there! A cool thing happened though, our row never got filled up so Gabriel ended up with his own seat that he could sleep in. We were going to ask the guy I switched seats with if he wanted his back but he was already asleep in his new seat. So now we are all just sitting here... Gabriel was asleep... and then I shifted in my seat and it woke him up and Josh and I still have not caught any Z's yet!

More to come!