Well I made it to China! This time I am an old pro at navigating when I get here.. But I am jumping ahead of myself! Since I lost a day coming this way let me start from the beginning. It is Thursday morning an I wake up at 4am to catch the Super Shuttle to the airport. I feed my kids and scratch their lil ears and give them a treat as I walk out the door. I was fricken cold in the morning when I left, but I walked myself out to the gate cause you never know how that is going to go at 4am! I get to the airport fine but the Super Shuttle guy dodges a coyote on Mill avenue after the last pickup! A coyote, as in the dog, not an illegal smuggler! In anycase, nothing was harmed in getting to the airport!
I arrive at Terminal 2 on time and walk in to the automated check in, it scans my passport and visa and issues me my boarding passes. I now proceed to the process I loath! The rent-a-cop-mall-security-at-the-airport people. I walk around the corner and I get selected for a hand wipe down for explosives... Good thing I decided not to do any reloading of ammo the night before and baked snickerdoodles instead.. I am just glad it did not go off with baking soda residue! Since I am successful here I can proceed to the line were I provide my boarding pass and passport. The TSA monkey at the podium I don't think has ever seen a passport card before since that is what I handed him.. Now I want to point out here that a middle eastern guy was ahead of me in line, was total fumbling around with his ID and boarding pass. I will point out he was not "RANDOMLY" selected for the explosive residue, since I guess I met their quota. Now I get to the xray machines and disassemble my miracle of packing into various tubs, right behind YEHOB for lack of a proper introduction. He again was fumbling around like he didn't know what he was doing or where he was at. Now it appears that the backscatter machine is a "SELECTED" option here as well and YEHOB was not selected to go through the TSA deathray machine and scooted right through the security. I, however, was not so lucky.. As they try to send me into the radiation chambers of death I told them I would like to opt out, so immediate radios went off "MALE OPT OUT", 3 or 4 times from various TSA people standing that the controls of this machine.. So I thought I would help and Scream "I HAVE CHOSEN TO OPT OUT OF THE DEATHRAY MACHINE!" They did not find that as amusing as I did... Anycase, they escort me and my belongs back to a table in the back where I immediately "ASSUME" the position.. Again, the TSA guy who I will call PEDRO did not like that I was getting ahead of him. He told me to relax as he explains what this pat down was going to involve. And after he finished his story and asked if I had any questions I don't think he like me asking, "Are you going to kiss me first? I prefer that!". He immediately got to his job of providing me with my Obamacare health check and violated me every which way from Sunday! When he came around to the front of my leg he felt the $400.00 cash that I had in my front pocket and exclaimed "WHATS THAT!" like he found a hidden bomb or something. I told him it was my money as I showed him. He got all pissy with me at this point and said that I was suppose to empty my pockets before coming through the security and that it should have gone in my bag, which was all disassembled on the table in any case! After that he seemed to be upset that I didn't throw my money into the TSA tip jar. I told him that I needed to have more cuddling before I would do that!
Anyway, despite my random selection the skys were safe because they caught my $400.00! But who knows about YEHOB and his travels.
I get to San Francisco and the plane get there and loaded somewhat on time, but it turns out that there is a glitch in the baggage system this day which delays everything out of the airport. In fact we pushed off and returned to the gate for more baggage. I was just hoping that Mengchen would see this before she heads to the airport.. The plane was a bit of a mess as people could not seem to find their seats and just randomly would grab a seat. I am lucky that I carried on all my things in a few backpacks and got one in the overhead and the seat next to me was vacant so I put my other bag under that seat! The flight over was uneventful just long as we fly over Alaska, then Russia before making it to China.
I get off the plane and almost lost my cellphone which had fallen off my beltless pants and left in my seat, but I caught that before I got more then a row or two ahead. At this point, since I have been here before I felt pretty comfortable as to where to go and what little symbols to follow! I get to the customs checkpoint and the lines for foreigners were 50-60 people long! They shuffled a few people over to the Chinese Nationals line to help with those loads and I jumped to that line as I was worried that Mengchen would have thought I might not have made it since we were already an hour late getting there and I have no way to get a message to her at this point! The guy working this station I do not think is bilingual and I forgot to take my hat off when I approached the station so it was a game of sharaids and I finally won! One last hurdle and I can meet Mengchen, the trolly car ride to the main terminal and through the declarations part of customs.. Since I had all carry-ons and had nothing to declare I got exit fairly quickly! Now as some of you know I had the game of losing camera rights the last time I was here by taking her photo without permission or even with permission if they were not to her standards.. This time I thought I would be sneaky and get her photo as I came out of the security area.. unfortunately I got here toward the evening this time and there were hundreds of people outside.. but she was standing there and waving for me!! And as soon as I pulled up my camera she was gone into a sea of people! Taking a sneaky quick photo of her is like trying to capture a photo of big foot or the lockness monster!
It is now rush hour here and we get our shuttle pass from the airport to the subway. Again it is rush hour and the subways are full of people and I have two backpacks with me. But we make it back to the hotel and I drop off my things and try to get a program that I need to get done for poor Jim who I found out had a horrible day! And got that done then we went out for pizza! It is cold here and the winds were picking up a bit which made that short walk a bit nippy.. we had a nice meal came back to the hotel and that ended the first days adventures!