Back to the Flip Side and Others

[Dachiri]

Well, it's been quite the busy year for me. But, now I'm back to galavanting. On Saturday, I'll be flying IAD-PIT and return on Tuesday for a dear old friend's baby shower (:cry: for our last time together as fabulous kid-free people). Hopefully Earl will cooperate for that. I've actually done the DC-PIT/CLE trips several times since January, and it's been good. Much less stressful than driving the PA turnpike.

My big trip starts on the 17th. I'll be off to China again. I start with a very typical DCA-ORD-PVG flight on the 17th/18th. Work for 10 stinking days in Jiangyin, China (oh, I do love the non-big-city travel! At least we're taking the train this time, so hopefully we WON'T spend 13 hours making a 4-hour trip!), and then back to Shanghai for 2 nights. Then, I'm tripping off to Beijing for 2 1/2 days. SHA-PEK on Air China the morning of the 1st (I must say that Air China's customer service was superb, I couldn't get their website to work for booking my flight, and a quick phone call and a fax later I had an e-ticket!). Then back to DC via PEK-ORD-DCA on the 3rd of October.

The most exciting part of this is that I'm traveling with a co-worker who was born and raised in Beijing! He'll be joining me for my quick sightseeing tour in Beijing, so I get a free, Mandarin-fluent translator/tour-guide for my personal travel! I'm sooooooo excited to finally see Beijing and the Great Wall on my *4TH* trip to China!

My god, I never thought I would get to see the other side of the world, much less 4 times in 3 years.

So the bigger news is that, with all those miles between my trips home, my trips to China, and the Mileage Plus card (good stuff if you have a dedicated airline), I'm planning a trip around the world! An around-the-world ticket is 200,000 miles, and I'm not far off from that. Given my travel schedule and purchasing habits, I should make it to the mileage within a year, and it'll be a few more months before I have the necessary funds saved up. I'll keep you all posted on my scheduling for that, and I'll probably create a website to track my amazing adventure.

[Barb-SAN]

So the bigger news is that, with all those miles between my trips home, my trips to China, and the Mileage Plus card (good stuff if you have a dedicated airline), I'm planning a trip around the world! An around-the-world ticket is 200,000 miles, and I'm not far off from that. Given my travel schedule and purchasing habits, I should make it to the mileage within a year, and it'll be a few more months before I have the necessary funds saved up. I'll keep you all posted on my scheduling for that, and I'll probably create a website to track my amazing adventure.
Dang, Dachiri...that would be another "first" for Taking Flight. No one yet has written about doing an around-the-world flight! Looking forward to reading THAT trip report (with photos, of course!)

Have a great trip to China too. :D

[Dachiri]

Well, the first part of my travels are starting out well. Earl cooperated and we had almost no noticeable change in weather here, so tomorrow should be smooth sailing. AND I got upgraded to first for my, um, tiresome (?) 35-minute flight to Pittsburgh. Too bad I can never get those upgrades on "real" flights. :rotflmao:

[Dachiri]

IAD-PIT and return down. I got upgraded to first on both flights. Back in May, I flew through a thunderstorm. That was what initially set off my fear almost 11 years ago. I'll admit, it was no joyride, but the nerves were worse than the turbulence. So, our ascent out of Dulles was pretty rough, and, again, the nerves were worse than the turbulence. It probably didn't help that I was in seat 1A, out of my comfort zone over the wing, on a smallish jet. My trip back was smooth as glass, so I'll have to remember that the monster still lurks and I do still need to employ my tricks (I'm a water glass on the tray table girl).

Tomorrow at 4:30 AM, I start my trip to China. I've got waaaaaay too much to do before then... :rotflmao:

Also, we found out that the train we're taking goes up to 350 km/hr (almost 220 mph). That should be cool!

[Dachiri]

DCA-PVG and SHA-PEK down now. DCA-ORD was a really nice flight. I had some trouble getting a cab to the airport, but once I got there, I met up with my coworker and had the greatestpilotevah! He was out greeting customers and talking and joking with them as we boarded. So chipper for before 7 AM, and nice to see someone who enjoys their job enough to get there early enough that his work is done and he can get out and see the self-loading freight! Another high-five as my co-worker complimented him on his landing (quite good, in fact).

Then a very long but good ORD-PVG flight, but I can't complain because it was inexplicably 1 hour shorter than planned. We were at the gate 40 minutes early, which is always good when you only have about 30 hours in Shanghai. :)

Now, for the fun. I know some people on the board have traveled to Asia, so a travel advisory for anyone traveling domestic China from Shanghai. SHA, Hongqiao Airport, has added a new terminal. CHECK WITH YOUR AIRLINE WHAT TERMINAL YOUR FLIGHT LEAVES FROM!!! If you can't communicate with the airline staff, have a consierge, friend, or babelfish translation do it for you! The shuttles between the two terminals (not close by each other) are not frequent or efficient, and an eticket gives you NO INFORMATION about what terminal you'll be leaving from.

So, based on that disclaimer, you can imagine that I had a bit of trouble with my SHA-PEK flight. SHA is not far from downtown Shanghai, so I left the hotel just over 2 hours from my departure time. China is an interesting place when it comes to lines, so getting to the airport just over 1.5 hours early is usually sufficient. So I got to the airport just under 2 hours early, and found out my flight was leaving from the other, new, terminal. By the time I got over there, through the line, and to the check in counter, it was only 35 minutes before my flight!!! :eek::eek::eek: I think because of this, they upgraded me to first, so I could use the "VIP/First Class" security line. I can't believe it (I was about in tears in line), but I made the flight. As is typical (for some reason) in China, the flight was *quite* turbulent (but I'm still here typing about it, right?). Also, the plane (an A330) had cameras mounted underneath to the front and somewhere else (they switched the view as we were taking off), and I tried to get some video of what the bottom of the plane was "seeing" as we were flying along. I must say, they had the cameras on as we were taxiing, and I have to give props to the pilots for hitting those *little* lines with those *big* planes so precisely.

So now I'm in Beijing, which is so smoggy I can't even believe it! They must have SERIOUSLY cut back on SOMETHING for all those Olympic athletes to say the air was okay, because I can hardly breathe and the "sunny" day we had today was more like "nuclear winter." Funny thing is, the traffic is MUCH lighter than Shanghai, but we had several very nice days in Shanghai where I actually saw blue sky, so I'm not sure what it is that make Beijing so horrbily polluted, but it is terrible!

I'm headed off to the Great Wall and other points of interest tomorrow, so I'll post some pics when I get back (Sunday evening, so look for them the weekend of October 6, as I'll have some time that weekend when I wake up at 4 AM). :thumbsup:

AND I just found out my upgrade to business for my PEK-ORD flight was confirmed. Today is shaping up to be a pretty good day...pollution be darned!