Travel Observations

I just completed over 26 hours of straight travel to make it back to my hometown of Camp Zama, Japan to visit my parents.

This journey consisted of:

• Waking up at 4 am to finish packing on Friday
• Driving to Amy's at 6 am so she could drop me off at the airport.
• Catching an 8:30 flight from Logan to Newark. The flight was a quickie, I think we spent just an hour in the air, but spent the same amount of time boarding the flight and sitting on the runway.
• One hour layover, and then catching a nonstop flight from Newark to Narita - this was the longest part of trip, clocking in at almost 16 hours.
• I breezed through customs and immigration, spent 20 minutes waiting for my baggage and then spent the next hour and half with my Dad, waiting for the 5:30 Narita bus to leave and bring us back to Zama.
• Narita bus arrives at 9 pm (we're now on Saturday, which would technically be Saturday morning for everyone in the US) at Zama
• I'm in bed by 11 pm.

Some random observations that I made on my trip:

• Checking in at Continental, it's now standard to do self-check in (which I prefer), with attendants nearby to help check baggage. The only part that confused me was when the machine asked me to scan my passport like a credit card. I looked it at, thinking there was no barcode, but scanned it anyway. And what do you know, it actually worked and picked up my information.
• Going through security at Logan was my first experience with the new travel lane system. They divide the lanes into three separate sections: Expert travelers, intermediate (I can't remember if this was the exact term) travelers, and travelers with families and special needs. I found it very effective and breezed through the Expert lane.
• Samsung had a mobile charging station at my gate in Newark, which I thought was a cool idea.
• I saw a Jamba Juice in the Newark terminal, but was too full from my Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwich to indulge. If these are all over NY (and Hawaii, where I first encountered the chain), why can't they open more in Boston? Currently, I believe there is only in the BU student building and I believe this was the result of a special project.
• On my flight to Narita, the flight attendant went around asking people if they had stuff in the overhead bins, and then went row by row asking them to close the bins. Which I found odd, as the typical experience is that people leave the bins open, anticipating that more people will board the flight and add their baggage to the bins, and then the flight attendants would close them before we take off. The smart people could hear the attendant coming and would jump up and close in anticipation of her question.
• On my flight to Narita last year, I experienced a wondrous new device on the flight. It was the typical screen in front of every chair but it acted like On Demand, meaning you could access hundreds of movies and show when you wanted instead of being stuck with the same ten channels that loop the same two hours of programming. Every time I've boarded a Continental flight since, I keep looking for that new system but it hasn't reappeared. Now I think it would've been better if I had never seen it, because it makes using the older system very frustrating.
• Continental has served the exact same meals for three years straight. Their food is decent for airline food but it would be nice to have more variety. It is comforting to know that my mid-meal snack will be a cheese burger that has been microwaved in a plastic bag (yet the bun is mysteriously unsoggy) and a 4 oz container of Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream. Yet I always know that I will get the same queasy feeling in my stomach after ingesting said snack.