Total travel time. Roughly 18 hours. Looking forward to this? No. Ever travelled this far to get anywhere? No. The airport awaits.
Ruth and I are super excited about our trip to the "Land of Smiles." We're booked on Asiana airlines, which just won some organizations "Airline of 2009" so I'm pretty hopeful it will be a good experience. Lord knows I'd do a lot of things to save a penny, so I was happy that Asiana offered the lowest fare, because I didn't really want to consider an American carrier. That really sucks because I want to support the good 'ol boys at home, but most have really cut corners service-wise and the majority of them don't offer free drinks on international flights anymore. This is a huge mistake, as I'd like to think most people like the occasional beverage.
Ruth and I, if you haven't heard already are newly engaged! Another reason that this trip is super exciting, if it wasn't already exciting enough with Ruth finishing the bar and myself finally using some of that vacation time that was about to max out. Seeing as we're now engaged, and being someone that will occasionally try to sweet talk my way into something, I decided to make the attempt to wink wink, nudge nudge the agent at the check-in counter into perhaps bumping us up to a higher level of service. I mean, come on, we just got engaged! Ya, not so much. The woman politely said no. C'mon! A little help for two young-ish lovers?!
Proceed to gate ------------>
Waiting to board the flight, and totally undaunted, I once again made the case for Biz class to the woman at the gate. Ruth, at this point, was content to let me go this one alone, so I strode up to the gate agent, declared myself to be newly engaged, pointed to my waiting fiance, whom I think was trying to shield herself from the embarassment of me pointing her out in front of all the people waiting, and kindly asked if there was any way possible that maybe she could see if there were any seats available in business class. Response: A muted "congratulations, I'll check and see." Success, I thought! We're in! A strolled back over to Ruth, convinced that I had talked my way into fine china, slippers, champagne, seats that fully recline, and whatever else they get up there. Seriously, do they get anything else, because we must have waited for everyone else to board before it became clear that we were going to stay in "Travel Class." Oh well, someday it'll happen. I'm taking those slippers home with me!
The first 6 hours. Eat, sleep, watch movie on tiny screen. Eat. You know the drill...
