Air Travel

Arrived Friday July 4 in Beijing to intense heat and humidity as promised. The airport is huge and spectacularly designed. It size looms larger than anything I have ever seen. We were met by our guide, Ms. Zhang Hong. As is common for Chinese that learn English and start dealing with westerners, she picked an English name, Sally. She started learning English in 6th grade, and said that she got better recently by watching 4 seasons of “Desperate Housewives.” The US still exports something to the rest of the world!
Sally finds our driver Mr. Yan, who does not speak much English. On to the hotel in a Dodge minivan (OK, so maybe 2 things we export) which is a modern urban setting adjoining a large shopping center. Surprisingly, traffic was not bad in this notoriously gridlocked city of 20 million people. People pretty much looked and dressed the same as in any big city. We crashed by about 7 p.m. China time! And we found a note this morning from our Colorado friends, Jana and Dave, whom we will meet up with soon.

Our travel day began like any other - NOT. Up at 3:30 a.m., on the plane by 6 and in San Francisco by 7:30. Once in SFO, we made our way to the international terminal to find that we could use our Clear Card (yes, Alex, FINALLY). CLEAR is a pre-screening you pay a fee for faster access to security. Our traveling son, Alex, uses it all the time. Kind of space age … scanned my irises in my eyes to verify my identity. Then a “concierge” ushers you through.
We ended up having one of those out of body experiences called “good customer service” … by an airline, no less! We had the privilege of settling into the United Red Carpet Club to await our flight since we were upgraded to business class. While I hunkered down to get some work done during the 4 hour wait for our flight, Peter actually paid attention to the monitor and noticed a flight to Beijing. Our original flight was scheduled for Hong Kong, then China Air which would get us into Beijing after midnight. He had the wild idea to check to see if we could get on the direct flight to Beijing. My response? “Oh no, no way they would ever do that.” I reluctantly made my way to the agent. Even she shook her head as she started to explore it. Well, to our surprise, 3 agents conspired together to make the switch for us! Fortunately, we did that crazy carry-it-all-on game (we could not have switched if we had checked luggage) so could actually be booked on the direct flight from SFO to Beijing! It left earlier and would get us to Beijing by 2:20 p.m. (vs. midnight)! We gained over 9 hours!
We settled into our nice seats on the upper deck of the Boeing 747. The seats fully recline, feet up, large amount of space, access to your own screen. Which made it easier to travel on a 13 hour flight! We tried an herbal remedy called “No Jet Lag” that our traveling friend, Janelle, recommended. Don’t know if that helped (or just our exhaustion from getting ready for this trip), but both Peter and I slept soundly.

We did a complete pack today just to make sure we could get everything into 2 carry-ons. Here's a picture of Peter's 2 bags, 1 rolling bag and 1 new Tumi backback. These 2 include everything, well, except for the PowerBars he plans to include (got to have something readily available to eat just in case).

We are taking a 747 over, and this plane typically has a lot of overhead space. Hopefully there will be enough overhead for both, but we managed to get an upgrade to business class, in the upper deck no less, a section neither of us has ever been in. A lot fewer seats in the upper deck, 2 seats on each side, but less overhead due to the curvature of the the plane.

We do not have a lot of time in Hong Kong to get through customs and catch our next flight to Beijing, so having carry-on bags will allow us to go right to customs rather than waiting for bags to come off the plane, which can often take a while.

Just in case you think we are a little light on clothing, these bags have 4 shirts, 2 pants, 4 pr socks, 1 pr shoes, assorted other clothing and toiletries, plus a computer, camera, books, noise cancelling headphones, and other stuff. We have to wash clothing every few days, or use the laundry service at the hotels, but that will allow us to go light. The new mantra is: take half as many clothes and twice as much money! This is the first time we have tried this, so we are entering a new approach to traveling.

A good source of info is www.onebag.com that includes info on how and what to pack. In fact, onebag.com and rick steves (www.ricksteves.com) both advocate 1 bag, total! We are still at 2, so we a ways to go with those super light travelers.
Peter