I got my first chance to fly on a 747, which I’ve wanted to do since I was a boy. It’s just a classic plane, and such a symbol of air travel, but all of the trips I’ve taken before have been on the newer, more fuel efficient models. But I finally went on a voyage long enough to warrant the classic, original jumbo jet.
Of course that means that the trip was long—14 hours long. And to steal from comedian Lewis Black, the airline can show you a movie, bring you dinner, show you another movie … and then you realize that you still have 9 hours to go. I thought it would be brutal, but it wasn’t as bad as I had it built up in my mind. Imagine the longest trip with the worst turbulence on the nicest plane, and that was my trip.
Cathay Pacific fed us dinner, breakfast, and a snack in between. The snack was fun, no peanuts here. Instead, ramen noodles, and pretty good, too. Many on the plane passed the time trying to figure out how to eat ramen noodles with chopsticks.
I brought a book, realizing that no electronic device would last 14 hours. But the turbulence was too bad to read, and every seat was equipped with a 9-inch LCD screen that showed dozens of movies on demand, video games, music and other goodies for free. That was cool. At 4:20 AM I made a determined effort to get some sleep. I gave myself until 5 AM, figuring if I couldn’t sleep by then it wasn’t going to happen. It was noisy, turbulent, and people kept bumping into me. I have to say over a dozen people bumped my elbow as they passed, despite my best effort at keeping out of the aisle. After what seemed like a half hour I could no longer stand it, and gave up on sleep. I looked at my watch; it was only 4:30 AM. About an hour later I finally started to drift off out of exhaustion and boredom, sleeping a half hour at a time. But that gave me enough. When we reached Hong Kong I had a few hours of sleep under my belt and I was ready to hit the city.
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