It was frustrating. Our orders said to be at the airport at 0530, and that the flight would leave at 0850. A week prior, I saw on FB a comment about having to be at the airport a 0230. I looked more into that and discovered some disgusting news. The 0530 was a No Later Than time, and it wasn't entirely accurate either. The ticket window opened at 0230 and closed at 0430. At 0500, they would start offering seats to Space A folks. So if we'd showed up at 0530 as planned, we'd have been in really big trouble!
Now we had to figure out how to work this. There were stories of folks camping out in the line overnight. The USO offered places to sleep, but it turned out to be surprisingly tiny. The USO had one fabulously useful thing to offer- they had an entire room where you could check your luggage into!! However, they wanted it gone by 0300, when they would lock the doors. It was a considerable boon though. I arrived at the airport with 8 sizable luggage items and I was able to walk out with only 1! I cannot tell you how awesome it was to be able to leave everything else in there. Oh, and we stopped by the USO and found it well stocked. So we had sandwiches and hot dogs and cookies for dinner. Score! It may be tiny, but the food was the best I've seen.
But, back to the dilemma of how to work the details of timing at the airport.
We decided to keep our hotel reservations. We debated the merrits of having one person show up for check in, but here was the kicker- you had to check in with EVERYTHING- all luggage, and every carry on item. I couldn't see Dan or I wrangling 12 suitcases, 9 carry ons, plus a dog in a ginormous kennel, alone. We considered leaving some at the hotel to sleep, or trying o return to the hotel to sleep, but with the unknown factors, it seemed wisest to just take everyone in.
We managed to have kids in bed by 9pm, and the alarms went off in my room at 0100. I think Dan slept till 0130. I showered, packed and hauled the girls out of bed. We met at the shuttle van at 0150 and were off. We were at the airport a little after 2. We headed up to the USO storage area to spring our luggage before the lock up and made it into line by 0230. They had it split into 3 lines and we went in the pet line. There was also a family line and a single line. The lines moved very slowly, but only the singles line was long, and it wasn't longer than the space designated for it. So my visions of lines wrapping around the terminal were put to rest.
Levi was not happy about being rolled around in his kennel. We needed 3 trolly carts to move the dog and all our luggage around easily. We were able to get Lei set up- he needed food and water dishes, special stickers on the kennel, and padding inside. We duct taped a bag of food to the kennel, and I duct taped the pet-pee-pad to the floor inside. A nice lady came around to check the documents and paperwork and slapped a sticky envelope on the kennel with all his paperwork. So easy! I'd had nightmares about how to get it all done and it was a 5 minute process and no one ever checked to make sure we met all the specific requirements for the kennel and everything.
There were probably 5 people in front of us, and despite the slow process, we were still at the desk at 0300. It took forever because they had to weigh everything. All the luggage, all the carry on, the dog, and the kids The politely asked for Dan's and my weights so we did not have to stand on the luggage scale! We were told to leave the kennel in a designated spot and that Levi would be taken away at 0600, so to be sure to walk him before then. We were told how to get him out the door and where he could be walked. We left him to his lot and wandered around, played on the escalators, caught up on FB, and eventually went up to the USO. Marian wanted one of their yummy sandwiches and the rest of the girls pigged out on donuts. I found a chicken caesar wrap to be surprisingly delicious at 4 in the morning. Joshua discovered that a tired tummy may not be a happy tummy and voided his. Poor kid.
We took Levi out and he got 30 minutes of circling a parking lot to empty himself and exercise. Callie was very distressed that he would be sad and scared and miserable on the flight. We stuffed him back in his kennel at 6 and headed through security ourselves. There were 10-12 pets lined up, and one of them was a barker. Poor Levi!
Security was pretty quick and painless. We found our gate and made friends with fellow passengers. They started loading the plane at 0745, and we went ahead and got on when they made the call for families with small children. I don't really consider our kids to be "small" but having extra time to get everything settled was heavenly!
Rylee, resting at the airport.
Waiting at our gate.
The plane was packed. It was smaller than I expected, with a 2-3-2 seating arrangements. We went with Delaney and Callie on the side, with Me, Rylee and Dan across the aisle, and Joshua and Marian sitting behind the girls. It worked out well. The plane was older and I was incredibly disappointed to see they lacked the tvs on the back of the headrests. I had been counting on that for entertainment! The audio jacks were also horrid enough to make it not worth the effort of watching anything they showed as well, although the kids were still happy to watch "The Lego Movie".
Dan and Rylee, sound asleep before we even took off! They were pretty tired!!
Delaney is excited for The Lego Movie.
Heh heh heh. Snuck a shot of these 2 as well.
These kids cracked me up. They were all playing Mario Bros on their DSs.
This was the Yakota terminal. It was raining when we arrived in Iwakuni, and I was too tired to think about getting a photo there.
After the 10 hour flight, this one didn't feel so bad. Although my legs decided they were done. I have had restless leg syndrome when I was pregnant and it was about like that- twitchy legs. Fortunately, we landed quickly and there was much rejoicing! It was 2203 when we landed.... or local time, it was 2:30 pm. Hooray for being DONE!
The kids were amazing and really did well. Callie did not sleep AT ALL, right till they announced the decent into Iwakuni. Then she nodded off and I nearly couldn't get her up to get off! Joshua and Marian snagged a couple hours of Zzzzzs and Rylee took 3 really long naps. We've already mentioned Delaney. I dozed of a bit but not as much as I'd have liked. Planes are just so dadgummed uncomfortable!
I was surprised how few got off at Iwakuni. I guess 99% of the plane was going to Okinawa, which was it's next stop. I think there was 1 other family and a handful of single Marines that got off. We got passports stamped and met our sponsor, who is the gal Dan is replacing. She brought some guys from the office as well. I was incredibly impressed! They took out all our stuff, loaded it and hauled it and everyone away! I got stuck with dog duty. I had to wait for the vet, and she needed to see all the documents. Unfortunately, we'd riffled through the documents and separated them. So Dan actually had some of the stuff she needed. We were able to sort it all out, and drop the dog off at the kennel. The kennel was not as awful as I was worried it would be. They had been very non-communicative by email. But even though they closed at 3:30 there was a warm bdy there to help us out. And despite being closed for the weekend, there will be someone to check the animals and walk the dogs twice a day. So Dan's new coworkers got us taken care of and dropped me off at the hotel.
We were able to get 2 rooms, so every kid actually has a bed to sleep on! Our sponsor was delightful and put food in our room to tide us over. I was really touched by that. They really took good care of us and it was really nice. We were all in the room and unpacking around 5pm. Delaney was the first casualty, crashing in bed a bit before 6. Dan had said he wanted to keep them up till 7:30pm, but I think he decided that was a lost cause, because Joshua and I were the only ones not sound asleep at 7. I was soundly asleep soon after. I think most everyone was awake around 4am. I could live with that!
So, that was the lengthy version of our travels to get to Iwakuni! Stay tuned for more of our exciting adventures in Japan!
