03.06.06

Time to head the other way

Posted in Travels at 4:30 am by Leopoldo

3/5/06 6:00 AM
Portland International Airport

I had a less than ideal start to what should be a long day of traveling. I checked in fine and hiked to the opposite end of the airport terminal so I could avoid Starbucks and get my breakfast at Coffee People. When I got there I for some reason managed to completely miss the CP stand in the middle of the terminal, thought they were a closed yogurt stand and bought my breakfast at Wendy’s. When I realized my mistake I almost decided to throw the ‘meat’ and ‘cheese’ sandwich away and pay again for what I really wanted: a muffin. Mental note, next time pay the extra $4 and don’t ingest that Wendy’s crap.

3/5/06 10:07 AM
LAX Cathay Pacific Business Lounge

I had always been curious what the inside of a V.I.P. Lounge looked like. With a business class ticket to Hong Kong and Bangkok I finally have a chance to find out. The short of it is, rather nice. The lounge is nothing more than a room with chairs and some food, but the room is nice with subdued lighting and is nice and quiet. There is a fridge with assorted sodas and fruit juices as well as a coffee maker and some bottles of booze. There are also various snacks, mostly bags of chips and pretzels but also some bowls of instant noodles. One thing that is noticeably lacking is any sort of (unprotected) WiFi. Note to airport designers: Power Outlets and Network. Those are the two things I immediately look for at any airport and are sadly lacking almost everywhere.

I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night, which made it easy to catch some quick Zs on the flight to L.A. I don’t think I ever nodded off for more than a few minutes but it was easy enough to drop off and wake up. If I keep this up I should be all caught up by the time the trip is over.

3/5/06 12:14 PM
Aboard Cathay Pacific 747

Lets begin by saying that I am rather impressed with business class seating. Even if I fully stretch my legs I still don’t hit anything. That alone makes it worth it. I have a pretty comfortable seat with adjustable Lumbar Support, which is particularly enticing since I threw my back out (not badly) last Thursday. I picked well by choosing a seat on the second deck of the 747 and next to a window. There are little storage bays all along side the window that fit my backpack, computer, book, etc.

Now for the bad news: we were supposed to have departed around 11:20 but are still on the ground. We pulled out from the gate and sat there for about 20 minutes before the pilot came on and announced one of the Air Conditioning units failed to come online when they started the engines. We eventually taxied to an unpopulated area of the airport and now have engineers onboard trying to repair the faulty unit. I have a comfortable layover in Hong Kong to connect to my next flight (just over three hours) but the more time we sit here waiting to take off the more I worry about making that connection. I also don’t think they can pull some other aircraft out and re-load us since I guess CP has very few of these behemoths lying about.

3/6/06 4:19 AM PST, 8:19 PM Local Time
Hong Kong

The delay was not too bad, just over an hour and we seemed to make a good deal of that time up en route. I have just about an hour and a quarter before I board my next flight and was hoping to sit down, recharge my laptop battery and catch up on email, maybe finish the episode of ‘Dead Like Me’ I started while flying. However the power adapter I paid $80 for airplane power seems to be altogether non-functional and I cannot find my international power adapters anywhere. I am hoping I (for some unknown reason) packed them in the carry-on. If not I guess I can buy new adapters in Bangkok. The good news is that I have a comfortable chair and free snacks at the CP Business Lounge. The better news is that CP offers open WiFi (go Cathay!). The bad news is that I only have about 35 mins of battery life left.

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