After my tour of Dublin, I arrived home Tuesday night in time to run out for a fish & chips dinner before packing. (The dinner came with a bottle of Bud – my last beer in Ireland.) After wasting hours on processing and unsuccessfully uploading the whiskey tasting video I had hoped to post before I left, I finally hit the sack around 12:30am. On top of my anxiety over what would be a long day of traveling, the battery on my back-up alarm was alarmingly low, so even the six hours of rest I got was light as I worried about oversleeping.
The next morning, I was up and Skyping with my sister and her boyfriend before I and my bags were out the door and on our way to the bus stop a couple blocks away. The bus arrived at the same time I did, and we pulled up to the airport half an hour later, where I couldn’t help but think back four days and smile. I prayed that my flights would work out as well as my days in Dublin had, since I would be traveling six thousand miles over the course of twenty hours with some potentially tight transfers in between.
I hauled my luggage to the US Airways check-in counter and waited while the clerk was forced to write manual bag tags, since my connections (Dublin to Philadelphia to Newark to Seattle to Pullman) would not fit on a standard printed tag. She seemed to have trouble deciphering my itinerary on her screen, so I helped her with my Orbitz printout. She warned me that I would need to collect my bags and recheck them through customs when I arrived in Philadelphia. She also told me to provide my luggage information to Alaska Airlines, who would be picking me up from Newark, so that they would have the bags in their system.
I cleared security with plenty of time to grab some breakfast and fill up my trusty Nalgene water bottle before boarding the plane, which – as the Irishman sitting next to me observed – was the smallest transatlantic aircraft either of us had been on, with a single isle between rows of three seats on either side. I normally reserve isle seats when possible, especially on long flights, so that I can stand up and stretch easily. This time, I was sitting by the window; but remarkably, I didn’t need to get out of my seat a single time on any of my flights, two of which were over six hours long.
What was even more remarkable was the view out the window as we approached Newfoundland and Labrador. I was successfully dozing off when I suddenly awoke with the inexplicable feeling that I needed to look outside. If you have ever clicked on the NSIDC link under my blogroll, you know I like to check out the sea ice conditions around the North Pole. On Wednesday, that is literally what I had the opportunity to do. After figuring out what I was seeing below us, I still had a strange urge to look around, which was when I noticed we had company. I spotted several other planes as we crossed the Atlantic, but this Continental jet was close enough to …well… see that it was Continental.
As we continued inland, Canada was resembling the surface of the moon until we neared New Brunswick. As we approached Philadelphia, the similarity between the urban landscape and the rivers, lakes and mountains I had just flown over didn’t strike me until I was looking at these photos later.
When I landed in Philadelphia, my first stop was baggage claim as instructed. My bags were on the carousel in no time, and I was able to reactivate my cell phone to let family know I had made it back to the States. Rechecking the bags through customs was a piece of cake – it was passing through security again that made me happy I had a two hour layover. I have never been required to pass through airport security more than once on a trip, so when I found myself at the end of the line that rounded a corner ahead of me, I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for. By the time figured it out, I had already been waiting a good fifteen minutes, and it would be another fifteen before I was being told that my bag would be searched.
My bag was also searched when I left Norway, thanks to a heavy crystal ball that I was carrying to help lighten my checked luggage. When I realized that the lead-containing crystal could trigger a search, I decided to carry it with me again in case that could circumvent my checked luggage being opened. So when the friendly security officer in Philadelphia said he would have to look inside, I mentioned the ball. As he reached in, he said that it wasn’t the ball he was after: it was a completely full Nalgene bottle that had completely slipped my mind. He gave me the options of hydrating myself on the spot, leaving my precious bottle behind, or dumping it out in the bathroom. I knew the trouble a liter of water could cause me on the plane, and I wasn’t about to leave behind a bottle that had been everywhere with me, so I opted for dumping it out. The only drawback here was that he would have to escort me to the exit, and I would need to spend another half hour in line for my third security screening of the day. Well, I had the time, and what else was I going to do?
After the crew on the first flight had kept me happy with drinks and food free of extra charge, the jaunt from Philly to Newark was too short for even a cup of water. This was where I would need to pick up my boarding tickets for the two remaining flights on Alaska Airlines. I found out that meant another chance to practice my security procedures, as the only place to pick up my tickets was at the unsecured check-in counter. With only an hour between flights this time, I had to be quick about it. The ticket clerk already had mine printed, but it wasn’t until I was on my way through a short security line that I remembered my instructions to provide my luggage information. With a split second opportunity to return to the counter, I decided I could try to provide the tags to someone at the departure gate instead. I would rather be on that plane than my bags, and I had a feeling my bags would be fine anyway.
When I got to my gate, I presented my information to a woman who was happy to help. She remarked on the manual tags, and with a closer look, questioned why my pending flight to Seattle was written down as 737 instead of the correct flight number, 7. I pulled out my Orbitz itinerary from a wide open carry-on bag whose zipper had just called it quits, and sure enough, my flight number was seven. I wondered how the clerk in Dublin could have made the mistake. Then I noticed what type of aircraft I was on. But the lady now in front of me wasn’t too worried, since mine was the only Alaska flight to Seattle.
As she was entering my information, she got a call on the radio about two bags with a suspicious flight number. We both looked at each other and smiled. She passed along the correction and confirmed to me that my bags were being loaded onto the right plane. I can only wonder what might have happened if I had decided to turn back for the check-in counter. It was a close call that I already knew was not to be my last: as we were touching down in Newark, I looked out the window to see at least a dozen departing jetliners waiting in line. By the time we were rolling down the tarmac, the captain came on the intercom to inform us that we would have a slow time getting under way: we were number twenty in line for take-off, and I had less than an hour layover in Seattle. When he added that we would be battling a strong headwind the entire way, I began to wonder if I would actually make it home. The Lord knows I like an adventure, but maybe the day’s adventure was to end in Seattle instead of Moscow. There was nothing to do but wait and see.
In the meantime, I would satisfy my growing appetite and try to catch a few winks. In contrast to US Airways, Alaska charged for both their food and entertainment. On the other hand, the Alaska attendants were more professional, and the televisions on US Airways were next to worthless. I just had to keep reminding myself that I had bought the cheapest ticket I could find. After paying six bucks for a soggy burger, I would have tried to sleep were it not for the half hour of bad turbulence we hit over the Midwest, plus the fact that I got the middle seat this time. We ended up pulling into Seattle a half hour behind schedule, which wasn’t bad, considering. But I was sitting in the next to last row of a full flight that had to deplane before I could make a beeline for my last leg to Pullman. I found my gate in a flash and was able to slip right into the end of a line that was just in the process of boarding.
After being on the ground in Seattle for less than half an hour, I was glad that it looked like I would be making it home, but I had to wonder whether my bags had made the last connection as quickly as I did. After a bumpy cranberry juice, we were descending over the lights of Pullman. I walked into Pullman’s single airport terminal to find my luggage, a poster with my name on it, and the lovely family waving it. Hugs all around.
I am sitting in the eco-friendly Tully’s coffee shop in the Seattle airport listening to the soundtrack of a movie I watched with Henry one of my last nights in Moscow. It is a movie based on a book based on a true story. I read the book last summer after Pike recommended it to me, and I saw the movie here in Seattle when it came out the week before I left for Norway.
I suggest reading the book before seeing the movie. A good friend of mine said that after buying a copy, she was bawling and had to set the book down after just one chapter. A couple of weeks later, the same thing happened when she tried chapter two. If reading the book is too much of a challenge, the movie stays true to the story, and the soundtrack is great, too.
My first posts to Heading North were made from the dining room table of my parents’ house last October. Now it is August, and I am sitting at the same table thinking over the past month. Here’s a recap:
Before my sisters arrived in Norway, I spent a week with Karl Sigve on Risøy at a summer camp for Vineyard Norden. It was my first exposure to Vineyard, and I had the opportunity to fellowship and worship with other believers from places like South Africa, the Ukraine, and across northern Europe. It was a refreshing environment after being relatively spiritually isolated for most of my time in Norway and also a great chance to catch up with Karl, who I hadn’t seen since Christmas.
The day my sisters arrived, I drove several hours north to pick them up at the airport, and the same afternoon we retraced the road back to Skien to have dinner and spend the night with Tina and her family. We were off by noon the following day to arrive in Feda and spend a couple of days with Karl Sigve and his parents, where Kristen and Heather experienced new things like midnight crabbing and mackerel fishing, as well as visiting one of the areas of the country where our relatives emigrated from generations ago.
From Feda, it was off to Stavanger, where we spent the night at the bottom of a hike we tackled the next morning, which led us to the famous Pulpit Rock. We were fortunate to have excellent weather and a start that was early enough to beat most of the other tourists who swarm the trails during the summer months. It was my first time there as well, and it provided us with some of the most breathtaking pictures of the trip.
A cruise through one of the world’s most scenic fjords the next day took us to Sogndal, where my sisters had the chance to meet my immigrant friends and experience their imported hospitality. As good as it was for us to see each other again, this was also one of the only low points of the trip, as I learned that David, the Iranian Christian, had been hospitalized just days earlier. From what I could gather, he had sustained serious injuries after being assaulted with a knife and was flown to the hospital in the nearby city of Bergen. My first suspicion was that the incident may have been racially motivated, and it certainly made the rest of my friends even more skeptical of their surroundings.
We spent that night at Sognefjellshytta, which marked the point where I felt like I was introducing Kristen and Heather to “home”. The weather was constantly teasing us with a mix of sunshine and rainclouds, so their view of the mountains in the area was not the best it could have been. At the same time, the clouds created an equally enchanting impression of the surrounding terrain, which included rainbows spanning entire valleys and even a chance encounter with a herd of reindeer.
The last few days of the trip were spent at Kvitfjell, where we attended an outdoor performance of the national play, Peer Gynt, and had a chance to relax a bit in a familiar setting after an itinerary that had been as equally hectic as it was satisfying. An evening in Oslo to visit our childhood stomping grounds, as well as to visit with Bent and his wife, capped off my sisters’ trip to Europe. We spent the last night at a hotel near the airport, where we woke up bright and early to send them on their way back to the States.
At the time they left, I was still unsure about my own travel plans. I had been considering the option of finding work elsewhere in Europe until next winter, but had already decided against that. I had received a tempting offer from my cousin Eric to live with him for his last semester at school in Stevens Point, Wisconsin but still had not decided on a departure date and where that would take me, whether directly to Wisconsin or home to visit Moscow. The answer became clear after I began to miss my sisters and the rest of my family and friends here, so I booked a roundabout trip that took me by train to the Oslo airport, by plane to Vancouver B.C., and by bus the rest of the way to Moscow.
It was smooth sailing until I got back to the most powerful country in the world, then everything fell apart. I found myself stranded in a shady corner of Seattle with dozens of other anxious travelers when the connection to Spokane was delayed by several hours. Ironically, I made friends with Malin, a girl from Sweden who was in the area visiting relatives before planning to spend the next eight months seeing the world. She had arrived in the States from a restaurant job in Oslo and was on her way to Coeur d’ Alene to see a cousin. We were both grateful to have found each other in the midst of an otherwise questionable and unexpectedly large number of people who were also waiting for the red-eye to Spokane. I will most likely avoid another Greyhound trip in the future, though I was pleasantly surprised at the good humor of the staff and passengers alike, especially considering the circumstances.
When I arrived two and a half hours late in Spokane the next morning, it was going to mean waiting the rest of the day to catch the next bus to Moscow. Instead, Kristen was more than happy to play hooky from work to pick me up. We had brunch at Perkins, and then made the drive down, where I managed to see a few friends and even take in my first showing of The Dark Knight before crashing after a non-stop three-day journey.
Since then, I have inexplicably had no jet lag to deal with, and instead have had the energy for dropping into the local hang-outs, visiting with old friends, and spending time with the family. There is no question that it is good to be back, but at the same time, the Palouse feels less like home than it ever has. I look forward to relaxing and catching up over the next few weeks before heading east to move in with Eric and see my extended family in the area for the first time in years.
Made it into Sandefjord on Tuesday without a hitch. Got worried after researching (on Monday) the regulations for entering the country, which state that I technically needed a round-trip ticket. We all know who doesn’t have one of those, so I at least expected a hangup at security, but my longest wait was at the ticketing counter – security and passport checkpoints didn’t ask me no questions, so I told ‘em no lies.
Flight couldn’t have been better. Plane was the sweetest I’ve ever flown in (leave it to Scandinavian Airlines), which means I had my own personal entertainment console with a wide selection of movies, music and video games (complete with handheld controller). It even gave me different views out the plane and a continuous flight summary. The food was great (both dinner, which came with a free beer, and breakfast), and the entire crew was Scandinavian. The flight wasn’t full, so at one point I had an entire row to myself, and took advantage of it to sleep a bit. Never got to lay down in economy class before. Arrived in Copenhagen early, then caught my connecting flight into Norway.
Since then, I’ve been staying with my third cousins in Skien. Their names are Ida Sofie and Tor Martin, and they are two and a half and eighteen months, respectively. Their parents own the house, and their names are Runar and Tina. Tina is my father’s second cousin, and we met on my last visit to Skien in 2001. Their hospitality is amazing, especially considering the special attention needed by my third cousins. Tina made a wonderful traditional dinner tonight of meatballs, carrots and potatoes, for which we were joined by Tina’s sister Beate, her husband Petter, and their two boys Kristian and Anders.
Skien, by the way, is even better than I remembered. Tuesday was sunny, and today was cold and cloudy. The first dusting of snow was on the ground when we woke up this morning, so it looks like I got here just in time. We spent time in the city today, which is just a ten minute walk away through their adorable neighborhood. Adorable because I adore it.
Tomorrow I will spend some time looking around for a few of the essentials I had to wait until getting over here to buy, such as GPS maps and camp fuel. Made my first purchase today, though – a Lowe Alpine mountain cap from an outdoor store in one of Skien’s shopping centers. Will also probably purchase a train ticket for Oslo tomorrow, departing on Friday, where I hope to meet up with Bent (Tina and Beate’s father) and Kelley’s friend Liza.
My last few days in Seattle were more entertaining than the first. I saw a bunch of friends, joined Dan and Brittney at a Halloween costume party, and watched “Into the Wild” at the Neptune theater. I suggest this movie (and its soundtrack) for a taste of the spirit behind this blog. Pike recommended the book to me when he heard I was leaving, and after reading the book, I had to see the movie. I was not disappointed. Listen to what McCandless says to Ron on their way up the mountain… it was actually part of a letter he wrote to Ron, but I was glad they incorporated it into the screenplay.
I miss the stars. There are no stars in Seattle.
Made it in from Moscow for the Josh Ritter show on Sunday, my birthday. Josh is from Moscow, and it was his birthday, too. His mom brought him cupcakes on stage, and a couple thousand of us sang to him.
Stayed at the Travelodge by the Space Needle that night with Jon, Sarah, April, Bart, Jordan, and Henry. Got dropped off by Jon and Sarah the next morning at Dan’s place. Dan is from Moscow – met him on Monday when he walked in the door. He’s loaning his couch to a complete stranger. Thank you, Dan.
Spent Monday bumming around Green Lake. Had a short conversation with an old Norwegian in the Library and did very little else besides an evening walk around the lake. A lot of time to think. A lot of time to talk with God.
Started reading yesterday in my pocket Inside Out. Dropped into Revolutions around the corner, one of the coolest coffee shops. For example, they had copies of Norway.com on their rack. Great coffee and service, too.
Went to a Mars Hill dinner & Bible study with Dan last night. Met some cool folks – one, Taren, from Norway who’s gonna hook me up with some family in Kristiansand.
Check out the map on the left sidebar. It will show you where I’m staying. Also adding some new pics (most of which are not going on Facebook).
