8 Planes, 4 Russells, and 3 Seats – Part 1

Before China, our flying experience was limited to a short jaunt to Dallas on Southwest Airlines and an afternoon flying over Jonesboro, Arkansas with a pilot-in-training friend. He was working on getting hours so that he could get his license (to fly!). That was a couple of decades ago, and we have forgotten why we were so willing to fly higher than a kite with a friend that had more “taking off” hours than “landing” hours. We circled that tiny airstrip several times before he had the nerve to actually put the wheels on the ground. I had started watching the fuel gauge and looking for parachutes and soft haystacks.

For our China trip, we would fly on eight different planes. Some were big, and some were bigger. I suppose that they all had names and designations like “Boeing 747”, but I can’t pick out Model Ts or Edsels, either. You may see me peering in the windows at car shows, but I’m really just faking it. I don’t know what I’m looking at.

Plane # 1

Our first flight was from St. Louis to Chicago. I was lucky and scored the window seat. Lucky just means that I claimed “Dad Privilege” and elbowed Logan aside. The takeoff was smooth, and we soared over the St. Louis Arch like true jetsetters.
After the stewardess had served me a half-ounce of Coke, I sipped it while gazing out the window as the sunlight faded. My lucky window seat was over the wing, so as the ground disappeared below the clouds, I was fortunate to be able to ponder the miracle of aerodynamics.

I remember reading one time that a bee shouldn’t be able to fly. Its wings are too small and delicate to lift such a large body into the air. That’s the theory, anyway.

So, why should an airplane be able to fly? It’s made of heavy metals and filled with heavy people getting heavier on tiny glasses of Coke. We don’t even attempt to work off any calories as we fly over the Rockies. We just sit in our seat, read Sky Mall magazine, and buckle our seatbelts so that we can’t suddenly jump up and do deep-knee bends.

Also, the plane doesn’t even flap its wings.

I decided this was a dangerous train of thought, and played Scrabble Slam until we landed in Chicago.

Plane # 2

Our “Going on a Trip” giddiness and more Scrabble Slam took us from Chicago to San Francisco. Night had fallen completely, and I wish we had realized that we would follow the night for the next 20 hours. I might have been more mentally prepared for prolonged darkness. I would have drunk more milk for the Vitamin D since I was deprived of sunlight.

Plane # 3

We left on our third plane ride at midnight from the San Francisco airport. This was really 2 am for us and our family and friends at home, but, everyone in California acted chipper and happy, so we joined in and ignored the time difference.

This was the longest flight of the whole trip. We flew over the Pacific for 14 hours. Our seats had personal TV screens where we could check our location and flight path. Instead of flying straight across, we arched toward the North Pole and passed back down over Asia. I guess we wanted to sneak up on Hong Kong so that they wouldn’t have a big surprise party for us when we landed. Maybe that’s because none of us were dressed for a party.

As you know, we had to make travel arrangements really fast. We couldn’t waste much time looking for the best seats and had to concentrate on the available seats and the price of the seats, instead. Cathay Pacific is a popular international airline and flies fully booked all the time. We had to take a Wednesday flight to be in Hong Kong on the 6th, so we booked two seats in one row and a third several rows away.

I had run out of “Dad Privilege” power and sat in the lonely third seat.
Sandy and Logan sat together while I had an aisle seat in a four-seat section. I appreciated that I wasn’t smashed between two strangers. Instead, a small and old Chinese man sat beside me. His wife and her mother (she looked crotchety and even older) took the other two seats. He smiled at me, said something in Chinese, and pulled out a Chinese newspaper while Wife and Mother folded their hands as if they were at peace with the world.

He was very polite and never intruded into my space. He must have been a contortionist because he eventually kicked off his shoes and folded his scrawny legs into the seat with him. I have trouble standing back up after squatting down and picking up a box of corn flakes off of the bottom shelf at the grocery store. I should work on that.

The only disturbing thing about him was that he smelled like Listerine. Wife and Mother must like that smell because I never saw them wrinkle their nose at him. I guess they have lived with it for many years, so maybe they were use to it. Or, perhaps their folded hands were evidence of a silent prayer for the smell to go away.

I clicked around on the little TV for awhile and found a couple of movies I might watch later in the night. I was thinking about a man I once knew that bought a bottle of Listerine every day (I think his habit had something to do with the alcohol content), when I fell asleep. I awoke six hours later and found Sandy standing over me. That was kind of creepy on a dark and loud jet.

She told me that she did not like me being in a different row. My heart thumped with pride at the thought that my family wanted me beside them while we flew over the deep and dangerous Pacific. I started to open my mouth and agree that I wanted to be there, also, when she added that she was blocked in her seat by a frail old woman and she couldn’t disturb her so that she could get up and use the restroom.
So, there you go. I was just a gateway to the restroom. The deep and dangerous Pacific had nothing to do with it.

Anyway, the restroom sounded like a great place to be at the moment, so I went with her and stood in line with her. In a few moments, I spotted Listerine Man and Wife roaming up and down the aisles. Mother was still in her seat, and, honestly, I don’t remember her ever getting up during the whole flight. I realized, then, that they had been waiting for me to wake up so that they could stand up and move around. I felt bad that I had selfishly snored away six hours while they were trapped. I imagined that they must have looked over at me several times during those six hours and tried to wish me awake. I vowed to get up more often in the name of peaceful international relations and potty breaks.

After my turn in the restroom cubicle, I waited for Listerine Man and Wife to settle down before returning to my seat. I watched my movies, occasionally released my seat-neighbors into the wilds of the aisles, and passed the rest of the night checking our location. We passed over the halfway point and descended toward Hong Kong.

We could get snacks from the plane’s galley anytime that we wanted, so I made a few stops at the cracker bowl and sodas during the night. Noodles must have been hidden away for the Chinese travelers because Listerine Man suddenly had a bowl of steaming noodles. I watched out of the corner of my eye in fascination as he slurped up the noodles with chopsticks. I don’t know how he ever snagged enough noodles to have a satisfying mouthful. But, he must have had about 70 years worth of practice because he was very good at it.

After fourteen long hours, the pilot finally announced that we were landing. I tidied the little mess of drink cups and cracker wrappers I had made around me while Listerine Man put on his shoes and refolded his newspaper into a smaller package. Right before we were told to fasten our seatbelts, he pulled a tiny clear bottle, a vial, really, from his pocket. It had a small label with Chinese characters. He opened the top and dabbed about 5 drops of the stuff behind each of his ears. Listerine Man was now Super Listerine Man. He put away the little bottle and fastened his seat belt. I wondered if he could jump out of the plane and defend us from Godzilla.

I’ll never know what that stuff was. I never saw anything like it during rest of my visit in China. He was satisfied with it, though, and found some comfort with it, so I guess that’s all that matters. Wife and Mother never questioned him about it.

We landed in Hong Kong at the break of dawn. We found our luggage, and waited for Matthew, our adoption agency guide. Around us, other planes landed and took off. Some of those planes were bringing in other families like us. We would meet them later in the day, and join together. The jets in the sky were charged with delivering us all safely to Hong Kong.

They did a great job.