Well, as promised, Devoted Readers (both of you) I am not writing this week’s entry from the comfort of my wood-stove-warmed garden room at the farm. Instead, I am in the Domestic Arrivals terminal at Fukuoka International Airport, Japan. It’s an airport, and it looks just like any airport in America except that the signs have strange symbols on them and most of the people have dark hair.
I’m waiting on the free Navy shuttle that will take me to the US Naval Base in Sasebo, where (hopefully) I will catch a launch to the ship. As it will be midnight by the time I get there, my chances are 50-50 at best. Could be I may just have to hole up in a corner until morning. I’m not worried. After all, how big can Japanese rats be? Do you have any idea what they eat over here?
It has been said that if you speak two languages you are bilingual, if you speak more than two languages you are multilingual, and if you only speak one language, you are an American. I’m an American.
But truth be told, travel for the modern-day English-only traveler is really not all that difficult. English is the universal language of airports, and the only time you have to worry about not seeing it is if you are catching a connecting flight in some backwater where you have to wait for the crop dusters to take off first. Or in France.
I flew out of dark, gray rainy Lynchburg at 6:30 Sunday morning, arriving in dark, gray, rainy Atlanta about two hours later. Normally it doesn’t take that long, but we were having trouble finding a parking space. After some determined parking-space vulturing by our pilot, we finally deplaned. In Savannah.
Just kidding. We found a good spot, in Atlanta, right near an entrance. They were able to hook up the long sheltered gate and everything. But that was the easy part, as I now had a 15-hour flight to Seoul, South Korea, to look forward to. Ever been on a plane for 15 hours? It’s kind of like being in church, except the food isn’t as good.
Naturally, I did not go on a 2-day fast in anticipation of the gastronomic delights being served up by the airlines. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and the air marshal is wrestling me to the floor for stalking the cabins and loudly inquiring who is responsible for the rubber carrots and the polyvinyl chloride they are trying to pass off as gravy.
I was very impressed with the on board entertainment, however. Korean Air offers you your own private little video screen and a wide selection of movies, TV shows, games and short subjects to wile away the time. It is almost like having TiVo, except that there weren’t 75 saved reruns of “CSI:Miami” waiting for me to delete them.
I checked out the “Classic Movies” section and saw that one of the selections was “Lawrence of Arabia.” The true story of Col. T.E. Lawrence and his exploits on behalf of Arabian independence during World War I is one of the most fascinating in the annals of history, and the film won a host of major awards and is considered one of the finest of all time. I couldn’t wait to finally watch it.
I can honestly say that I probably have never seen a more boring movie in my entire life. I thought the freaking thing was NEVER going to end, and it became a battle of wills, as if the movie was daring me to hit the STOP on the remote and jab my finger through the touch-screen on the QUIT option and end my suffering once and for all.
However – determined that Peter O’Toole would not get the best of me – I persevered and sat through it until the bitter end. And that still left me with a good 11 more hours to kill. That was spent watching an episode of “Two and a Half Men,” about 150 games of Freecell, and a nap that was all too short.
On the whole, it made me appreciate the trials of such renown travelers as Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake and Captain Kirk a little better. Though I’m sure the USS Enterprise had Freecell.
