DAY 1 THURSDAY OCT 18th - Travel Day

And so it begins. I find my self breaking night in anticipation of meeting up with Joe and heading out to the airport for our first flight out to Chicago. It's somewhat of a tradition to break night in order to prepare myself for the second leg of our 15 hour flight to China. You might be wondering why, well my logic though disturbed is to keep awake long enough to the point of exhaustion, thus allowing me to sleep most of the long flight.

We get to the airport @4:30am and boarded AA Flight 303 @6:30am to Chi-town. Flight was smooth as silk, we both took a moment to catnap before arriving. (Read sidebar) Judy picked us up and took us home to chill, while we wait ed for Jose to come out of work @ noon. From there we headed out to have lunch together with the family, Judy, Julianne and Virginia before going out to the airport.

 

The crew minus one gets their drink on at Pepes Mexican spot. Jose and I have our doubts on Joe, will we have to carry him after he drinks this bucket. We went back to the house and caught him struggling to keep awake with no night night nap. He looked like a bobble head. Jose creeped up on him to take his picture but couldn't get the evidence.

We are now getting ready to head out to the airport to check in with Angel and board the Plane to the Orient.

We regroup with Angel and headed to the gate where we awaited are standby fate. We boarded FL AA187 to Beijing however The fate of Percious the winged horse was not with us as we got bumped down to the main cabin. The over all feeling by the group was that the flight (though long at 12.5 hours) turned out to not be so bad. The seats were a bit tight for myself and Angel but we made the best of it. On the 777 or Triple 7 as they are know in the industry the width of the plane gives the illusion of more space, since it has two aisles. Angel sat with Joe and I of course sat with my buddy Jose. We got feed twice during our flight, Beef with vegetables and dessert after take off. Then we had pizza with salad and dessert just shy of 2 hours before arrival.

Now we finally head down for our descent. I went to shut off my personal TV screen in front of me. A few seconds later it had turn on again. So I reached forward and turned it off again This went on several times only to find out that Jose was turning it off and on at the console on the armrest. Bum got me good.

Arrival at airport after passing through customs. It is now 9:30pm Friday night. Here is a brain twister; Joe and I went from leaving Thursday morning 6:30am NY time (2 hour flight) arriving at Chicago 7:30am effectively loosing 1hour due to time change. Waiting 11.5 hrs to Then board plane heading out the China at 7:pm Chicago time. To then go 12.5 more hours on the plane heading forward in time effectively advancing through Friday and arriving at 9:30pm at night. So while you guys reading this blog were just starting your Friday morning, we were getting ready to end our Friday day.

We meet up with our tour guides Lui Pei and Alex who we hired to pick us up at the airport and then take us to various sights for the next 3 days in Beijing. Here we are in the van traveling yet another hour to the hotel

We get to the hotel The Grand Mercure and check in at the front desk. Jose and Angel get room 836, while Joe and I get room 708. We quickly settled in to call it a night and get some well earned sleep in a "Bed". Time now 12 midnight : GOOD FREAKING NIGHT .........