I noticed that I put a place holder in the blog
for
Thursday, March 2. However, I now
realize that nothing is going to happen that day. I
am leaving from O’hare at noon on Thursday,
but since I’ll be crossing the International Date Line, I won’t arrive
in
The morning has been uneventful. Mike and I ate breakfast at Steak n Shake, and then he dropped me off at O’hare. I got in the line for United International check-in, but when I finally got the front of the line, they told me that I had to check in at Domestic because I had an e-ticket. So I waited in that line for awhile. I needed the person checking me in to look up my frequent flyer number, because I didn’t know it. This caused a problem because she was looking at my passport and it has my maiden name on it. It took me awhile to get her to understand that my frequent flyer number was under a different name. But finally, it was all checked in. I was very happy to see that I have an aisle seat. I’d prefer the window, but aisle is better than the middle of the 4 seats in the center of the 747. There was no line at security, and I did not get searched.
At the gate, I discovered that O’hare has wifi,
but it costs
$7. Since I only had an hour before
boarding, I decided $7 wasn’t worth it.
The flight was completely full – every seat on the 747 was occupied. It was very hard to sleep because people were talking and walking around throughout the flight. Even with ear plugs, it was too loud to sleep. The woman in front of me was constantly shifting in her seat, causing her seatback to smash into my knees. There was always a line for the bathroom. In general, it was pretty miserable. At least it was smooth. It barely felt like we were moving at all.
The sun did not set throughout the 14-hour flight. The cabin was dimmed in an effort to trick us
into thinking it was night, but it didn’t work.
All in all, the 14-hour flight was not nearly as
bad as I
had thought it would be. We arrived in