Trip To China - The Full Account: An Epic Adventure

Today was the day. The sky was a light shade of gray as the rain suggested that it may bring a sobering atmosphere to an already intense circumstance. We pulled up to the airport and started pulling our suitcases from red lightning. (This is the name of what has been my vehicle for the last six years of my life. The red Jeep Cherokee Classic has been through a lot, and held many friends and acquaintances. It will be missed.) One, two, three, four, five, six …. Two carry-ons, and two laptop bags. It worked out well that the majority of my family was able to make it out for the send off or we may still be sitting in the parking lot juggling those bags. We wheeled them all in, got our temporary boarding passes, and came to the front counter. After the first three bags were put on the scale, the assistant went ahead and let a reality check fly. “You know, this is going to be nine hundred and sixty-five dollars for these alone.” Doh! When Jewel and I had checked online I had mistaken the overweight size for the standard size, and so had packed them mostly between 50-71 pounds (save for one that weighed close to 100!) 

So we reach the first moment of decision. Do we pay probably close to three thousand dollars to get our bags sent from Norfolk? We decided not to. My father and I made an organized bee-line for the vehicle and drove to the closest K-mart to acquire two more suitcases. In the mean time, Jewel and the others were busy unpacking all of the suitcases, evening them out to be fifty pounds or below, and leaving the remainder in a pile to be packed into the new suitcases. Were we not sure that the Lord had called us to go, this alone would have been a difficult obstacle to overcome. But truly, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in thee.” We packed the rest of our bags and got back in line. When we got to the front register again, our initial helper had moved on and a new man was to help us to get on the plane. We weighed the bags and received our new price that was a considerable amount less than the amount for just the first three weighed bags. Then we received some more news. “Now, you realize that because you have a lay-over of seventeen hours, you are going to have to pick up your bags in the JFK airport?” Doh Again! 

You may be wondering why we brought so much baggage. The answer to that question is somewhat simple while also a bit complex, depending on how you look at it. So we will try to look at it from the simple kind-of-way. I received counsel that if we moved somewhere, like to China, I was to make sure that my wife was going to be able to live comfortably. So we both went through our stuff, and filtered it until we felt that to get rid of anything else would be to lose the ability to feel at home in our new country. The only things we left behind that would not fit into the suitcases after we had repacked them were some books that will have to wait to be read. 

The plane was not uncomfortable. Jewel and I were on a side with only two seats and so we were able to sit next to each other and talk about what we might do when we got to JFK. We had already said that because it would be difficult to get all of our luggage organized and moving with just the two of us that we may not stay at the hotel we had booked, but instead just stay in the airport for the full seventeen hours until we could check our baggage into the new airplane. Upon our arrival in New-York, however, we found that with two rented carts we could get our luggage out the door to where yellow-taxi could call us a van to fit it all in.

Now, you must take a second to picture this with me. Jewel and I are now pushing a cart each piled up with four medium/large suitcases while wheeling our carry-ons, carrying our backpacks, and lugging my guitar along with me. The looks we got, and comments given were often quite humorous. The scenery would change when we got to Guangzhou the next day, but only because we would be going through an airport at double time. (This story is for later though)

So, our illustrious taxi driver finally arrived at the Garden Inn Suites in Jamaica, New-York. This was somewhat of a difficult task because he had trouble saying the word “Baisley”, the street name that the hotel was on. We unloaded our stuff onto a luggage cart (these I have gained a great deal of respect and appreciation for.) and went inside to check in. This process was smooth enough, and we left for our room after explaining the reason for the plethora, nay even the abyss of luggage to our kind guest service assistant.  Once we had settled into our room, contacted folks to let them know that we were safely in our hotel, ordered some Domino’s sandwiches for dinner, and re-arranged our bags in our less than extremely large room, I decided that it was time for my nose to be powdered. But I soon realized that this would have to wait as I stepped into the bathroom to hear a “splish-splash” of feet. It took me less time than it is taking me to type this sentence to realize that the splish-splash was being created by my own feet in the pool of water that I was standing in. So, after laying a towel across the entrance to the bathroom, and, out of possible muscle memory, leaning down to check on the sink and toilet to find where this leak may be coming from, (it was a broken seal on the toilet) I told my beautiful wife that I would return soon after talking with the front desk about our dilemma. 

I was met in the lobby by a tall man with a kind attitude who asked if there was anything wrong. When I told him what was happening up in room 407, he told me that he would be up directly to help and that we would have to be moved. His gesture when he said moved made me nervous because he seemed to be saying that we would be bringing our luggage down to the lobby. I told him that we had a lot of luggage, and he assured me that we would not have to move too far. So, Jewel and I began moving our suitcases out to the hallway. Soon a man came walking in with a plunger. I began to help him to realize that the toilet did not need plunging, and showed him where the leak was just before the original man from the lobby came in with a new key. So a few members of Garden inn began to help us to move our stuff down the hallway to a new room which was at least twice the size of our old one. The man explained that he wanted to help us to have room for our luggage. We thanked him, and called Domino’s to tell them of our room change. 

The next morning found us early standing outside of the hotel waiting for a shuttle to bring us to the airport. The first shuttle had already left without us because it was too full (and again, our luggage was of the ridiculous sort of amount) We struck up a conversation with a couple of guys about where we were going, and what we were doing. When we mentioned what Jewel’s major in college was, one of the two guys spoke up, “Oh, so you’ll be going to a very rural area right? Don’t you have to go really deep to be one of those?” We explained this to him, and laughed about not having a specific set of guidelines that after acquired would get you mission status on Facebook. 

We arrived back at JFK at 7:30 am and rolled our baggage up to the counter as we were the first two in line for our specific flight. Our flight did not leave till 11:15, but we wanted to be sure that we had enough time to get comfortably on the plane. About two hours later, we were very glad we had come early since we were still waiting at the counter. See, this was China Southern Airlines first flight out of JFK, and their card reading machine was simply not working. There was going to be an additional fee for our extra baggage, and after giving some cash that I had, the rest was not going to be easy. After about a half-hour of waiting, we were told that they would try one more thing and if it did not work we would have the rest of our fee waved. About an hour and a half later, I reminded them that they had told me this, and we were finally allowed to go through to wait at our gate. 

That was seven-hundred dollars saved because the card machine did not work. We got to the gate in time to sit down and order a cup of coffee. Soon, over the pager I heard my name being called up to the gate desk. A couple of thoughts went through my mind. Maybe I had packed something in one of the suitcases that was not supposed to be in there, maybe we were going to receive another apology about our delay earlier. But, on the contrary, the desk agent wished to inform me that I owed seven hundred dollars to the airline, and that the card reader had been fixed. To this I replied, that I had received a receipt that said that I would not have to pay for the rest of the baggage because I had been waiting so long. She replied, “Yes, I do remember seeing you at the front…” She called the manager and told me that he would be coming soon. Upon his arrival, I learned that he was not going to be kind about the whole incident (though he had been with us since we arrived, and knew how long we had been waiting.) He informed me that it was their first day and because the machine was working now I needed to pay for the baggage. We went back and forth for a while as the gate opened up for boarding. This being a flight to china, the line got REALLY long REALLY fast. I talked him into giving us a discount on our baggage and still ended up saving three hundred. The flight was mostly eventless though it did last for fifteen hours. Little did we know, this would be the calm before the storm. 

Guangzhou sits near Hong-Kong and is a semi-popular airport. Not quite as big as Beijing, but still rather large as we soon learned. We were told in New York that we would not have to go through customs. This proved to not be true as we arrived. This, however was the most painless part of the Guangzhou airport. We had to fill out arrival cards, and had our visas stamped within ten minutes. Then we went to pick up our luggage. Because we were the first to get our luggage on the airplane, we were also the last to get our luggage off. The good news was that we did not have to pay for the two carts that we would use to cart our luggage around. So with the same setup as we had in the New York airport we set off to find where we were supposed to go to get to our airplane. The problem? No one spoke English… So we were trying to find out how to get our bags to wherever we were to get them, and this was not without great difficulty. Our plane had arrived close to 4:00, and our airplane was to leave at 5:40. So off we go through the airport. This was the highest moment of stress during our voyage. We knew no one, did not speak the right language, and were being given different instructions from each person we talked with. As we got to the third level through the elevator, I realized that I did not know what we were going to do. I did not know where to go, nor what to do if we did get there. But around the bend came a Chinese man who said, “Do you need help? They said someone needed help.”

The next hour and a half was full of running, and sweating. Chasing a man who was trying to help. Getting ahead of long lines to find that we were in the wrong line. Finally getting our bags on a belt to find we had to go to another airplane line to pay for our extra baggage. Dry-heaving seemed to come on as a result of the loss of time. Finally, with boarding pass in hand, and passport in the other. We ran to the TSA as we checked our watches and found the time to be 5:25. It did not take too long to get through TSA and we started running, backpack bouncing, guitar swaying, and carry-ons rolling through the Guangzhou airport. Our gate was 226, and so we were flying past the gates at lightning speed. It was a long corridor. I mean, a LONG corridor. 216, 218, 220, 222, 224, FINALLY! I look up at the gate sign to read, “Flight to Lijiang moved to gate 218” … RETREAT! Off go the crazy two americans back the way they came from and running now at warp speed. 218 was down an escalator. As we approached the gate, we saw the sign flashing in red “FINAL CALL LIJIANG” What a relief! We got on the bus that would shuttle us to the airplane and traded face sweat as we kissed each other. 

An hour and a half later we were still sitting on the runway. Not sitting next to each other, but sharing the unity of a nap after our exhausting run. I did feel bad for the two guys sitting next to me because who knows how I smelled! But we were on our way to Lijiang, and we knew that our mission was accomplished. We went through no security or customs at the Lijiang airport, and soon were walking towards brother Dom and brother Ian. What a relief! We had been brought faithfully to China, and this was just the beginning of our adventures.