Traveling Home for Our September Visit

When we travel stand by it's all about checking the magical load numbers before you go to the airport, gambling if you'll get on the plane as a standby, or if you'll be looking for an alternative routing. So around 8am on the 3rd (guam time), Stephen checked, and it all looked good- now I will note that he had a ticket for him (no stand by) because he was on the way to training...he was really checking how my stand by status looked. I looked to be the second to get one of three seats. not bad, considering the day before I was second to get none of minus eight seats (over booked by eight and then one person who ranked higher than me in the standby).

It's not until we're at the actual gate, that we meet a lovely dispatcher from Houston, who's trying to get home, that we learn that the flight to Honolulu (which also goes on to Houston) that morning got canceled and they rolled 20 passengers over on to our flight to through Narita (Tokyo). So the two of us (not stephen, the dispatcher and I) are thinking, we just got bumped by revenue passengers and that she and I may be looking for hotel rooms in Tokyo. Then the gate agent hands us our new boarding passes and says we're checked through to Houston...what!

Even in Tokyo, we were nervous nellies. They took our dispatcher friend's boarding pass at one point, which we thought was bumping her off, but turned out to the JAL employees that cover for CAL there, it was very important that they write "OK" on it. After loading the plane with all three of us in first class, we kept watching the JAL employees who were coming on board to rearrange passengers (we don't understand their system but just thought they'd be coming up to us next to say we had to give us our seats).

The nauseous feeling finally left me when I heard the landing gear being pulled up into the plane as Tokyo was growing smaller. Then it was time for 14 hours of good food, lay out seats and the new on-demand video/music system (built into each seat). Yup, I think I got lucky this time.

And let's just say, this also meant I got out of cooking Stephen birthday dinner. I had made mini-chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast before we left, but I can not compete with: open bar, sushi and lobster for appetizers, variety of hot rolls, filet mignon, the other side dishes, ice cream and fruit cobbler, cappuccinos (okay we skipped those because we had to get some rest on the flight, but they do have the machine on board) and then don't forget the omelet and fresh fruit and all cinnamon rolls for breakfast. No one should judge us for eating all that (plus we later had dinner in Houston) because the 3rd lasted over 40 hours for us...I think somehow that justifies all the eating :)

Now it's training time in Houston and I'm just waiting until we can get on another plane and head up to CT to see you all!