JAN-D-8
JANUARY 29-B, OUR SECOND WEDNESDAY CROSSING
THE DATELINE,
IN A LONG TRANSPACIFIC FLIGHT THROUGH LOS
ANGELES
FOR THE RED-EYE CONNECTION, CROSSING THE
CONTINENT TO RETURN
HOME TO WASHINGTON DULLES AND GW, AND DERWOOD
January 29-B—30, 2003
I am above the wide Pacific, and heading with the jet stream as a tail wind toward immigration into LAX, one of the few people on this plane having been born in this land of milk and honey. For al the rest of the Filipinos, it is like the fertile ATM of the Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and almost any other English-speaking resident of the modern world—it is the place where wealth still springs directly from the tapped rock. Even though I note that the stock market has dived even lower since my takeoff, and my asset value is decreased still more, perhaps John, the oral surgeon, was right, when he quote my response to him as he was bemoaning the stock market’s last three year history and what it had done to him. I told him that I was in the same position but perhaps more significant in the negative net numbers of greater than 60% in those same three years of market losses—but it did not really matter, so long as I could still carry out missions where I should be, both abroad with a few of those increasing obligations at home as well. He was inspired by those comments, so perhaps I might take heart from my encouraging him. I have some very heavy obligations that require huge amounts of shrunken capital almost immediately upon my return, so I would like to see things looking a little better. It is true that I am still able to carry out what I want to do, but I may have expanded dependants to be covered at least transiently in the near term future, and a lot of plans that require large capital expenditures. This may be some part of the last part of this Jan-D-series in the re-entry phase (Jan-D-9) when the only big real estate obligations I have both come due simultaneously. But, these are concerns of a whole other world. I am still thinking about the positive influence that this mission seems to have had on those served during this most recent mission, and would like to continue such help, so long as I am able.
On this day/night/and day flight ( as we race in the direction opposite the sun’s course, time flies on the watch, while it is made up on the edges of that day/night acceleration by the addition of this calendar day, now returned after the January 10’s disappearance. I drowsed for a little while after the meager dinner we were serve3d after takeoff in the A-340 from Manila, and then watched the first of two movies I had blown off on the westward trip across the Pacific two and a half weeks ago. The first of these had looked interesting to me, but had gone so long that I elected not to get caught up in it for the several hors I thought I would have to make up. But the waif-like blonde Gamin of Reese Witherspoon attracted me into it this second time around, as she went back from being a big time designer in New York back to her double-wide redneck roots in “Sweet Home Alabama.” It was a well-done whimsy of a light-hearted regionalism’s way of making a popular movie with a sexy and “How we live now” lifestyle appeal—the kind of movie I usually do not see, since they look like extended sitcoms on TV that I do not see.
Having watched one movie, why not another? After all, the flight is long enough to justify taking in two feature length films and still only consume half of the traveling time at most! So, I watched “Serving Sara” a movie featuring a beautiful model turned actress—not often successful as a transition—and it is Elizabeth Hurley that makes the movie worth watching. OK—it was only chewing gum for half-closed eyes, but, all I did otherwise was to put together my 2003 Running Log, which I had bought while I was passing through Grandville with Doug and Milly at my Christmas visit to Grand Rapids.
LONG WAIT AND LONGER FLIGHTS
FROM LAX HOME,
NOW INTERRUPTED BY SUSPENSINO OF THE DRIECT FLIGHT
ON WHICH I HAD BEEN BOOKED,
BUT, AS FOR THE CROSS-COUNTRY OUTBOUND FLIGHT,
IT SEEMS THAT NON-STOPS NO LONGER EXIST,
SO I MUST BOUNCE THROUGH CHICAGO ON A RED-EYE
It has happened again—the non-stop direct flight I had booked for the coming and going are both canceled so that I must now take a later flight out of LAX—the Red-eye to Chicago, and an even earlier takeoff to IAD than I would have had for my arrival time. I already have the email files ready to transmit, and the film is all packaged for processing, so now I must just remember to take the active growing culture of the milk that is sitting on the kitchen sink table left there when we left in a hurry when Jennifer had noted the earlier takeoff of “her” flight from Dulles, which I was unaware was also supposed to be mine. She thought we were both going A/A out of this terminal in LAX, but she was going to CHL. As she might have known from our already having transferred out of CHL from JAX on the flight up to BWI, that is the hub of USAir, and the crash of the first fatal scheduled airliner in fourteen months occurred the same day we landed and transferred through it, curiously through the international terminal of CHL—now recognized in retrospect as a closing of the lethal runway and gates. So, she scattered to go over to the Terminal One complex of USAir here at LAX to be just six hour early for her takeoff on a flight that at least goes logger across the continent than mine. I have a similar long delay here, but found an electric outlet and can use the time in the LAX terminal, but now have to spend several more flight hours in crossing the continent in two stages, before I do the Washington Flyer and Metro shuffle to GWU where the Bronco is parked. These re-entry details seem so pedestrian after the global mission concerns I had been considering earlier, but maybe I have been reduced to the common level by the pabulum of a couple of popular movies!
THE MUCH LATER ONGOING FLIGHT TO CHICAGO
AS A RED-EYE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHTER
I met a very pleasant young woman as my seatmate on the flight to Chicago whose name is Stefani Fort. She is an instructor at the East Bank Health Club in downtown Chicago, where she was born and her parents also live, her mother actually coming to pick her up in the pre-dawn snowy cold of Chicago. She found out where I was coming from and what I was doing and she was very eager to see pictures, so I showed her the laptop collection of the last few months of medical missions of 2002. She would like to join one in the future. She may also be interested in trying to come to Boston, which she has never visited, to se friends run the marathon in April. She was inspired by a few of the stories and will seek more in the home page and in the fourth order so far from this trip for Out of Assa through Kurt Johnson I had referred to him.
I had prepared a message to lawyers regarding real estate deals and their closing tomorrow in the one instance and the offer for the other for processing in February. But emails have returned, so I will have to go to GWU for several important functions besides turning in the film as always... I will print and fax the matters of the pending settlements of the real estate to Dan Kennedy, whose email no longer works for me. I must also get a few incoming messages looked into and then stop for grocery restocking after the exhausting long three day and two night trip home to Derwood for the first hot shower in a very long time and a bid of time in a real bed for the first time this week.
If I can work out hits process, I may be able to have the film processed in time to pick it up tomorrow on return from the real estate settlement attorney’s office which I will be checking in to at the office where I left such information in the briefcase I have there. That would allow me to do some of the major “Re-Entry work” over the weekend, such as the clearing the mails and phone messages, and even sorting some of the returned pictures.
I am carrying the repackaged film as a carryon, which, as always, has been a smart idea for my further packing it up as I take the Washington Flyer to Metro to get to GW. I had walked off the LAX-originating flight and walked briskly to the connecting flight to IAD on American Eagle, and had not yet reached the gate when they were paging me as the last of 11 passengers to board. This is very close for a luggage transfer in ORD, so I may not have to deal with the principal bag if it missed the connection... As I tripped down the hall to the end gate announcing that I was the pone being paged, they told me to tap on the captain’s door and announce that I was the last one and that there were 11 passengers in total. I did so, but caused consternation as I entered, since the closed cockpit door opened only a crack to see what the news was. I had delivered the message as I had been instructed, and I had promised to do so—so perhaps this major security breach will go down in the annals of FAA irregularities to be corrected in the future!
So, in my light Antarctica running jacket, and every other bit of fabric I packed in the carryon for re-entry, I am looking down on about six inches of snow and a ground temperature of 22* F, with a promised Washington report that it will have warmed up to freezing by the time of my arrival—sporting a suntan and mosquito bites in my tropical outfit. Re-Entry, her we come!