I'm Home!

I finally made it home. It was an interesting trip. My 1 hour layover in Tokyo turned into a 5 hour layover in Tokyo which would have been fine except that it took my 5 hour layover in Dallas and turned it into a 1 hour layover. That's 60 minutes to get off the plane, get my luggage, go through Customs, recheck my luggage, get back through security, find my gate and get on the next plane. I managed, but I did a lot of running (anyone remember OJ Simpson commercials?). Not an experience I recommend to anyone.

I would just like to state, for the record, that the Universe is beautiful. As we flew from Korea to get to Tokyo, I looked out and saw the mountainous countryside of Korea. Just gorgeous. Then, after Tokyo, as we crossed the North Pacific in the dark, I look out the window to see the clouds spread as a giant carpet beneath us and the stars twinkling above. I almost didn't recognize the big dipper because there were so many other stars in and around it.

I had a real good samaritan moment while checking in at Tokyo. I had to go to a desk to trade my JAL boarding passes for American Airlines boarding passes. As I waited for the necessary 137 keystrokes, a young Korean man came up to do the same at the counter next to me. It was a difficult process. A Japanese woman speaking English to a Korean man who obviously understood perhaps one word in ten. At one point, she was trying to get his baggage claim stickers, but he had no idea what she was talking about. I quietly asked the woman helping me for my baggage stickers and showed them to him. He quickly grasped the situation and they concluded. It gave me that familiar warm feeling of goodness. Makes me happy to be able to do things like that.

Ages passed, and I finally arrived in Norfolk. My sons had not been told that I was coming home, so they were bored and impatient waiting in the airport. And then down the hallway I come. We all see each other; they run to me; I pick them both up and finish my journey to my loving wife. Life is good. The universe is beautiful.