Life Changing Words Ministry

President's Journal

22 Nov 2006 – Delhi

Quite the strange past couple of days. There was a lot more last-minute stuff than I expected, but I got it all finished in time. Dad showed up around 11:15am Mon, and dropped me off at the airport.

I made it to the United line pretty smoothly – no problems during checkin, and my luggage was significantly under the 50lbs/bag limit (clothes don't weigh that much). When I dropped my luggage at "CTX" (the security screening after the bag is tagged, but before it's given to the airline), I almost left it locked, because I didn't immediately process the mumbling of rote lines by the CTX guy – having a sign that said "no locked baggage" or "unlock your baggage" would be wise. But after I walked away, God quickened me to understand the mumbling and to realize that I needed to go back and unlock it. And, even though it was a few minutes later, and the other bags around where I'd stacked mine on the CTX cart were already processed, mine was still there, so I was able to unlock it (thus preventing problems/hassles later, like having them force their way into my locked bag). Security before the gate was a breeze, and I bought lunch at the concourse while waiting. PDX to LAX was uneventful. I had to ask directions to the international terminal at LAX – they didn't have very good signs in the airport. Once there, I got in the wrong line, because it was a line where other people were queuing up, and "Air India" was listed on a sign above that line, along with a bunch of other airlines. But "something didn't feel right" (ie, another prompting of God), so I got out of that line, and found the actual Air India checkin counter (again, LAX could use an upgrade in the clarity of their signs). My bags had been checked all the way through to Delhi from PDX, but I needed to get the Air India boarding pass at the LAX checkin. After checking in, I made it to the gate with no problem. I sat at the gate for an hour. About the time that the agent said we'd "start boarding", they cleared the waiting area at the gate, and made us go thru yet another x-ray + wanding; I guess I feel "safer" or something that they've got that extra security. After the re-screening, we waited another 45 minutes before finally starting the actual boarding process. Twenty minutes after the scheduled departure time, we were finally all on the plane.

The 9hour, ~9000km flight from LAX to Frankfurt was about half-empty. There was a cool feature on the plane: on the video screens, if there was no other movie / in-flight entertainment going on (or if you had a working in-seat A/V system, you could choose the appropriate channel and watch it even when other entertainment was available – however, my entire row had broken A/V, so I could only watch what was on the main screen, and couldn't listen to anything), they were often show a map with the plane's current location alternating with stats like ground-speed, distance travelled and remaining, and destination plus current ground-local times. The approximate flight path took me from LAX, NE through Hudson's Bay, across the southern tip of Greenland, skirting around Iceland (they actually broke off a great-circle route to stay outside of Iceland airspace; I don't know whether that was just because of Reykjavik's airport restrictions, or whether Air India wasn't allowed to fly through Iceland's territorial airspace), across Scotland and down into German to Frankfurt. I got a few hours of sleep on the plane, but it wasn't all that restful, or continuous (ie, I woke up a lot and had to shift around). We had to deplane with our carryons in Frankfurt, while they cleaned and re-stocked the plane. The second leg (Frankfurt to Delhi) was a nearly-full flight – not many people ended their flight in Frankfurt, and a lot of new passengers boarded; fortunately, there were still only two of us in our row of three seats, so we could still split the middle seat for spreading out (the armrests moved out of the way), which made the sleep a little more doable. I got another couple hours, though still not good sleep – but I wasn't expecting to sleep well on the plane, and got what I expected. :-) This leg was about 6 hours, and took us across the southern edge of the Black Sea, through Iran, and down into India.

Customs, etc, was actually quite easy. Bill was there after customs to meet me, and we hopped into the Taxi, and went to Gene's, where I would be able to rest/recover: take a "shower" (which means a bucket that I can fill with warm water and manually dump it over my head and body) and "sleep" for a few hours. I lay down around 6am, and was in the bed until about 10, though I'm not sure how much actual sleep I got. I did my morning devotions, and made this entry in my journal. Since they said I had until lunchtime at 2 to sleep, I'll try to get a little more rest, if not actual sleep.