Last week, I left Beijing Capital International Airport for the long journey home. And I mean that literally; it was probably the most eventful journey home in a year. (Well, it also helps that I was away from home for a year also.)
When I was leaving, I was smirking at the fact that there was a typhoon hitting Seoul at that moment and I wasn't there. What luck, right?
I paid for that dearly.
As the plane left Beijing, it felt quite normal. It was uneventful until the plane neared the China-North Korea border. Then things started to go a little crazy as the plane started to get sucked in by the typhoon as it was passing through Seoul and North Korea.
Yes, you read that right. The typhoon tried to suck us in.
As a result, the plane hit the worst "turbulence" I had ever seen, and this beats out the crazy flight I once had from Denver to Vancouver. The flight attendants were holding on to the drinks cart and the seats, trying desperately to keep their balance. Some passengers behind them were genuinely scared for them, going like, "If you fall, we've got you." I rested my head on the headrest. I was in the middle part of the plane, along the aisle. I could literally see the overhead luggage space swaying back and forth. The shaking was unbelievable.
This lasted for a few hours until we finally hit Siberia. The TVs, which were turned off during this, turned back on. We looked at the flight path tracker, and saw a huge S-shaped route diversion around Manchuria as the plane detoured to avoid the effects of the typhoon. Our original flight path was to cut through the northern tip of Japan and then through the North Pacific Ocean; instead, we were now cutting far north to Siberia and Alaska. Needless to say, that was a HUGE detour.
We ended up traveling right over the Bering Strait, then down the North American coast down to San Francisco International Airport. This is the same flight path as to Canada, which tells you what we had to do to get out of that huge mess. The rest of the flight, thankfully, was uneventful.
I readied myself for San Francisco. I knew that I had over 7 hours of layover time there, which explains why I said it was a "long" flight home. I had a tight schedule there; I planned to quickly do a
towel invasion in the Ducks' rival team's arena in San Jose (the blog was a stupid idea but apparently it's getting quite a lot of attention from Ducks fans).
One setback is that I had to go through customs. That was expected. However, I didn't expect the second setback -- I had to get my luggage and re-check it. However, the latter didn't take as long as I expected because the customs line-up was insane enough for my luggage to get cleared before I did. The customs line-up was long; I saw one person spend 20 minutes in front of the customs officer before he was cleared. Part of the delay might be because the United States require photographing and fingerprinting for most foreign visitors now. The other might be because I was on an Air China flight and Chinese citizens were screened more vigorously. Me? Due to my Canadian passport, I was exempt from photographing and fingerprinting, and I spent less than a minute in front of the US customs officer.
The trip to San Jose was shortened greatly as a result but still doable. I took the BART to the Caltrain transfer station in Millbrae, and I boarded the Caltrain, where I had my first "that's what she said" moment since my return to North America.
That's what she said. It was almost too easy.
I got to San Jose with 15 minutes to spend there. I quickly took a peek at the HP Pavilion as I added it to the list of NHL arenas I have visited, and realized that I have now visited every NHL arena on the West Coast. Cool. I quickly boarded the express Caltrain on the way back to the airport.
At the airport, something stupid happened. My flight wasn't recognized. Thankfully a ticket agent realized that the computer was just being a stupid moron and got me the appropriate ticket. I grabbed a quick bite at Burger King and boarded the plane.
Coincidentally, I ran into a friend on the flight who is also from Vancouver and was working in Korea (where we met). She was supposed to arrive in Vancouver about 6 hours before me but coincidentally she was also affected by a typhoon, forcing her to wait at San Francisco for a long time also and boarding the same flight as me.
The plane left San Francisco with me having a perfect window view of the Pacific Ocean sunset with the Golden Gate Bridge in the front. It was gorgeous.
After finally landing at Vancouver International Airport, I spent some extra time at customs due to me claiming some cash. Then I waited for my luggage. And waited. And waited. It wasn't coming. I finally went to the United Airlines counter to ask about it, and apparently my luggage decided to spend MORE time in San Francisco. Great. They arranged to have it delivered to my house the next day, and gave me a slip to show to customs on my way out.
The first customs officer (before luggage) was good, but the second one (after showing him the luggage slip) was a douche. He was like, "How much did you buy while you were on vacation?" and gave me a hard time about why I bought so little during this "vacation." I mean, come on. You looked at the form and saw that I was away for over a year. Do you really think I took a 13-month vacation? He was a moron.
Finally got home around midnight. Stayed up a little bit more to get things settled, and then plopped into bed. I was out like a light.
