Reboot!

 SWCJ Trip 2025

Travel Day

Saturday, April 12, 2025

I should have called yesterday a "no-travel" day.  Except for the ride to the airport, I went nowhere.

Unlike the old Southwest days where they could disembark and board a plane within an hour, it took forever to board today's American Airlines flight: already an hour just to board.  But I know that international flights are a whole different ballgame.  We were all sitting down finally by our departure time of 12:45 a.m., but nothing was happening.  Time ticked away and the announcements never came.  Then the pilot said that they found an issue and they needed to power down the entire aircraft, which means all of the passengers needed to disembark.  Because this was an international flight, we also had to take all of our belongings with us.  So we left the plane and waited some more at the gate.  

Top left corner is a reflection of
inside the airport, which makes 
this a weird picture, but I'm sharing anyway.

Meanwhile, I got a message from the airline on my phone, saying they couldn't rebook my connecting flight to Osaka.  So I talked to the gate agent, and she said there wouldn't be a problem because they have flights that go there about every hour.  I watched the lights in the plane go off and then come back on.  REBOOT!  Well, at least they dealt with the issue before we got off the ground and we could get off the plane and use restrooms and stuff.  Also, I was too tired to care that much, and still a little anxious about connecting to an Osaka flight.

So at about 2:30 am, we finally left LAX.  I had ordered the "bland" meal for my flight because they had described their vegetarian meal as "spicy".  (I prefer not to eat a lot on flights, especially long ones).  My food wasn't bad!   I could have added salt, I guess, but I was eating in the dark because I was too sleepy to eat at 3:30 a.m. Pacific Time when they had brought my food, which came before everyone else's because it was a special order.   They had turned off the cabin lights after serving to everyone else, which I pretty much slept through.  I could have turned on my light, but it wasn't really a problem.  My food was a chicken and wild rice dish with salad and balsamic dressing that was a little messy because of the packet.

I watched 3 of the offered movies.  Thanks for a big selection!  Movies:  Juror #2, Moana 2, and Godzilla MInus one.  So the theme was movies with a number, I guess!

We were also served breakfast, and my food was a scrambled egg with spinach and mushrooms, and a tomato on the side.  Not bad either!  I had little snack-type leftovers from both meals, which I ate eventually during the trip.  It looks like the regular dish had some kind of salsa, so I'm glad I ordered what I did.

Somehwere during the flight, we crossed the International Date Line.  I guess it was good that they served food based on Japan time.  

Next up:  Planes, trains, and automobiles