Saturday, May 30, 2009

The trip from Japan to the states.

Many of you are aware of our Space-A woes. Space-A is space available and it basically means if the Air Force has a plane going somewhere and there's room, you can ride along for free. Lots of procedures and red tape, but hey, it's free. All the flights we kept trying to get on got rescheduled and re-routed, etc. One was full. Finally, on Monday there was a flight scheduled to leave the next morning for McChord AFB, WA. There's a TV channel on base in Japan that lists flight times and show times (what time you have to show up at the terminal), but it's usually wrong. I called Monday night to verify times, but they closed early for Memorial Day. As of a previous phone call, the show time was supposed to be 0520, but they said it may not go. So I set my alarm for 0405 with the intent to verify it was going and the show time, and made sure everything I could possibly pack ahead of time was packed since it was going to be an early morning. At 0405 when I called they informed me it was going and the show time had changed to 0415. Yep. Ten minutes. I freaked. But we decided to try to make it. I threw the last few things in the suitcase, threw on clothes, woke up a very sleepy Jackson and we headed to the terminal. We got there at 0417. So from asleep in bed to packed, out the door, and at the terminal (about a 3 minute drive) was 12 minutes. That seriously has to be some kind of record. They ended up letting people on the plane that showed up as late as 0500. Wish I'd have known I had time to pee and put in my contacts!

We got checked in and baggage checked, then let Jackson play in the playroom for awhile while we waited to board the plane. Mike was with us for this whole thing up until boarding at 0510. Saying goodbye was of course hard for both of us. Jackson was pretty clueless, so he wasn't upset at all. They put us through security, then on a bus that took us out to the plane.

Our 9.5 hour flight from Japan to Washington was on a C-17 Globmaster. Sometimes they put on what are called "comfort pallets" that are basically airline seats. But this plane had two pallets (which I should mention are not what you think of when you hear the word pallet, but something similar and about 4-5 times as big), plus a fuel truck on it. Think about how huge the cargo bay has to be to hold a FUEL TRUCK and two pallets. Huge. The seats we sat in were on the side of the plane. Not super comfortable, and definitely not reclining, but not terrible. Jackson rode in his car seat. We bought meals for the flight and the loadmaster that was our "flight attendant" was really nice. It was pretty loud and they gave us foamies (foam ear plugs) which Jackson wouldn't leave in, and I decided were too much of a pain to bother with. It wasn't THAT loud. They handed out juice, nutrigrain bars, meals if you bought one, and airline pillows and blankets (it was also a little chilly). Jackson and I spent most of the flight sitting on the blanket on the floor picnic style. Try doing THAT on a commercial flight! He did manage to take a 3 hour nap, which was good considering the early morning. I couldn't really get comfortable to sleep, though. Even without in-flight entertainment, it was the easiest 9.5 hour flight I can possibly imagine.

Once we landed at McChord, I found a phone and called Mike. He gave me our flight info for getting from Seattle to Dayton. The only problem was that it was midnight in Seattle and the shuttles from the base to the airport didn't start running until 5am. Even if we had been willing to sit in the terminal for that long, it would've been too late to get us to the airport in time for our flight. So we paid almost $100 for a taxi. Luckily Mike had called the lodge on base and gotten the number for a somewhat reputable company.

We got to the Seattle airport about 0200 Seattle time. The only thing that was open was the USO. That place was a total saving grace. It was dinner time in Japan so Jackson and I had sandwiches, brownies, and some cereal. Then we just hung out and played some. Lots of people were trying to sleep, so I was attempting to keep him somewhat quiet. Not very successfully though. I think we may have woken some people up. It totally beat having to sit in the airport lobby for 2 hours until the airlines opened.

At 0400 we went downstairs to the airline and checked in. Through security--always fun with a toddler, a double stroller, a CPAP which requires special testing, a laptop which has to be taken out of the bag, and water for Jackson which also requires special testing. Oh, and no other adult. But we made it through unharmed (except the brand new laptop bag did suffer a broken zipper). Then we wandered around the airport until our 0610 flight. Jackson was sleepy but not really interested in napping. We got quite a few comments and questions about his daddydoll.

The flight from Seattle to Chicago was 3.5 hours and Jackson screamed for the first half-hour then slept the rest of the way. I managed to sleep a little, too. Changed planes in Chicago and headed for Dayton. We landed in Dayton at 1517 local. Mom and Sheila had gotten gate passes so we weren't even out of the terminal area when we met them. Jackson recognized MiMi right away and was excited to see her. After baggage claim and a drive to Tipp City, we were DONE travelling. After 25 straight hours, we were glad to have it over with. Jackson really was a super trooper for the whole process and it went much smoother than I anticipated. Hopefully the way home is the same.

Jackson's had a very hard time adjusting to the time difference. He woke up the first night after sleeping for two hours sobbing uncontrollably and inconsolably. He was up for about seven hours before going back to sleep. Then he took a 5.5 hour nap. The next day was a little better. He stayed up late, but only slept about 4 hours at night and 4 hours during the day. Then 9.5 hours the next night but with a 4 hour awake period in the middle and another 4 hour nap today. He's up now after sleeping 4 hours straight, then another 4 off and on waking up about every 30 minutes. I'm REALLY HOPING he gets his days and nights straightened out soon. I am up with him and since we're sharing a room, I wait until he's been out for at least 30 minutes before I go to bed. Which means when he wakes up every 30 minutes I don't get any sleep. I'll probably crash on the couch if he manages to go back to sleep at all tonight. Some nights I just let him get up and play for an hour. Just what I want to be doing at 2am.

More posts to follow on our time in the states. Glad to be here, but missing Mike already.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Guam Vacation

Mike decided a while ago to take leave this week. Since he is going to the desert for 4 months and won't have a chance to use up as much leave as he needed to in order to get below the use or lose cutoff, he had to USE some up or LOSE it. So he had the leave planned but we couldn't decide what to do. We considered Hiroshima, taking a few day trips, or Osaka. Then we decided to just go to Guam... well, he mentioned someone else we know was planning that and I jumped on it. Since I'm spoiled rotten and always get my way, he had no choice but to just agree. =) I thought a few days relaxing would be the best way to spend our last free time together. Good decision.

The trip TO Guam. We got on a bus from the base to take us to the airport at 11am. It's about a 1.5-2 hour ride to the airport in Tokyo. Jackson was a monkey (surprise, surprise) and didn't sleep at all on the bus. We got to the airport and they wanted to know why our passports didn't have Japan entry stamps in them. We all have 2 passports. One set of "official" passports to use when we moved here on official business. The other set are "tourist" passports for vacation, etc. Our official ones got stamped when we moved here, but we had our tourist ones with us. We won't make that mistake again. From now on we'll always carry both. But we got taken to immigration and they had us fill out a form that apparently gets done a lot because it had a sign by it saying "MILITARY" so obviously we weren't the first ones to have this issue. For a while there I was freaked out because I seriously thought they weren't going to let us on the plane! The rest of the trip was uneventful and Jackson still didn't sleep.

The hotel. We stayed at the Pacific Islands Club (aka PIC), and it was pretty nice.

We got a really good deal ($100/night including breakfast) so we were excited about that. Plus they have a great water park with kiddie pools, water slides, and a lagoon to kayak in. And it's right on the beach. There were a few downsides. One being that the lobby was not air conditioned which made for a HOT baby when we were checking in... and with Jackson hot=cranky! Plus it was late, 8:00 Japan time, 9:00 Guam time and he was in desperate need of some sleep. Also, the lobby, hallways, and water park were not non-smoking. That got pretty irritating because almost all the Japanese people smoke. But they also had a nice spa and I got a massage on Mothers Day. It was very nice! The one downfall of the room, which overall was great and had a balcony with a great view, was the lack of place for a crib. They gave us the crib for Jackson, but there wasn't really anywhere to put it that would be dark enough for him to sleep. Except the closet. We started with one closet door, but call a call from the front desk wanting to know what was up with our closet, so I put the other door back on, too. Mike took a picture of Jackson's "jail".

Guam.

Guam's main industry is tourism. And it's almost exclusively Japanese and Korean tourists. Obviously if Americans want and island vacation they go to Hawaii. So immediately everyone knew we were military since that's pretty much the only Americans that go there. So a lot of the restaurants and shops catered to the Japanese. Food, snacks, etc. I was just glad to see $$ signs and English words. =) The hotel was a little far from the main strip of hotels and stuff but still walkable. We walked "down the hill" two out of our first three days there. Then on Monday, Mike rented a car. Once again, great deal--$35/day including insurance and a car seat. So we had that for the last two days we were there, which made it really nice. We were able to travel around the island and do sight seeing and broaden our restaurant choices.

Sight seeing. We saw Two Lovers Point
the Latte Stones
and a couple of forts. (See earlier post from Mike's Guam TDY for descriptions of those.) Plus we walked through the Chamorro village, but all the shops were closed when we went. The native people on Guam are Chamorros, and that's also the language they speak along with English. Our last day we went to Underwater World. It has tunnels you can walk through with fish all around and above you.

It was very cool, and Jackson definitely loved the big fish.
At the end there was a touch pool where you could touch fish and starfish.
But Jackson thought it was more of a splash pool, so we didn't stay there long.

Food. We had breakfast at the hotel every day. We ate at a restaurants most other meals and had leftovers once or twice. The restaurants in the hotel were EXPENSIVE so we only had that the first night we got there and didn't have any other options. We had TGI Fridays, Tony Roma's, an Italian place called Vitale's, California Pizza Kitchen, a Jamaican restaurant, The Mermaid Tavern (twice), and Jeff's Pirate Cove. My favorite was the Mermaid Tavern (which is why we had it twice--see note above about me being spoiled). They had the best spinach dip I've ever had. Jeff's was also very cool. Some Japanese soldier hid on the island for 30 years and when he was finally captured he talked about how he could hear music coming from the Cove. The restaurant got sold a few times and now belongs to Jeff. He has kind of dedicated it to the soldier that was found. It's a pretty neat story and a pretty neat place.

The water. The beach by our hotel kind of sucked. It was really rocky and had lots of trash on it. So we spent all of our water time in the pools. There was one pool that was maybe 8" deep and had a bunch of toys for kids in it. Unfortunately to get to the main play equipment, you had to go where water was coming down on your head. That meant Jackson wanted nothing to do with it. But he did play with another thing that didn't require water on your head, and loved the pool in general. Especially when we brought down his watering can from the sand set (which we didn't use). There was another pool that was shallow, maybe 3', but obviously too deep for him to stand. It had big floating animals, which is why it was called the zoo. One was a crab that had a slide down its back. Jackson really liked that one. It got a little tiring for Mommy to keep catching him and putting him back on the top of the slide, though. They also had a lagoon that you could kayak in. I couldn't believe how much Jackson enjoyed that! We had fun just kayaking around a little, and there was a waterfall that he was mezmerized by.

Golf. Mike golfed three days, and the courses were beautiful! He also played pretty well.



The trip back to Japan. A NIGHTMARE. We got a late check out from the hotel hoping that Jackson would take a nap. No such luck. He did finally fall asleep as the plane took off, but only for about 20 minutes and didn't go back to sleep for the rest of the flight. After we got through the health screening, immigration, baggage, and customs, we were looking for our bus back to the base. It's normal schedule is leaving Narita at 4, 6, and 8pm. But due to the extra steps for swine flu, it had been delayed to 5, 7, and 9pm. But sometime while we were in Guam, they changed it back to 4, 6, and 8. We landed at 7:20 and walked outside about 8:10. Once we saw there was no bus, we called the base and found out they had changed the schedule back. Great. So that meant we had to take the train home from the airport. Luckily we got on an express that went from Narita to Tachikawa and only stopped 4 or 5 times in between. That took 2 hours. Then we had to get from Tachikawa to Fussa (only about 6 stops). The biggest issue was getting through the stations with 2 suitcases, a golf bag travel case, a stroller, a CPAP and 2 backpacks. When we got settled on the train in Tachikawa I looked at Mike and saw he didn't have his backpack on. When I asked him if he had the laptop bag he said, "Nope. I guess that's gone." Crap. We left it on the express train from the airport. We got off at the Fussa station and walked to the base (about 30 minutes). Got in the car and came home. By the time we got home it was almost midnight. Luckily on Thursday we called the train lost and found and they had the laptop bag. It took Mike 3 hours of travelling in rush hour train traffic to get it back, but we got it. Through all that, Jackson only slept for about an hour and a half divided between the two trains. He was really ready for bed by the time we got home!

All in all, it was a great vacation, with a few obstacles getting there and back.
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