A travel puzzlebook of Jordan's offered this tidbit of wisdom: The word travel comes from the root "travails" because in the old days, travel was very difficult and grueling. Maybe we haven't progressed as far as we think we have...

It's currently 4:26 am, EST and I'm up, typing on MySpace. For those that know me well, it would normally be unusual for me to be up this late, but a week after a rather grueling return trip home from Asia, I have developed a bizarre jet-lag induced sleeping schedule which involves an evening nap, and then another in the early morning hours. In general, this means that I get to enjoy most of the few daylight hours offered this time of year (from about 7:30 to 5:30, roughly.) However, sleeping throught normal dinner hours and my unwillingness to cook at 2 am has meant my meals have included such healthy items as oreos and milk, or a variety of products bearing the "Campbell's Chunky" label.

The plane ride back was quite an adventure. We crossed twelve time zones, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Taipei to LA, where Jordan and I parted ways. Despite calling ahead to book our seats, a window and a middle seat, upon checking in we found that they had reseated us. Our new seats were the same: a window and a middle seat, but separate from each other. This makes NO sense, seeing as the people next to us were both traveling alone, but we took the seats thinking that as I had been reseated in an emergency exit with no seats in front of me, surely someone would trade. Well, that didn't work out, seeing as while the people next to me had a good four feet of leg room, I instead had a large bulkhead purporting to contain a fourty-foot inflatable slide at my feet. I became quite adept at sitting with my legs at a 75 degree angle to the right of me over the course of the 14 hour flight.

To make matters worse, they had the little fold-out tv sets and a seat pocket beneath the window because there were no seats in front of me. Naturally, my book of crosswords fell out of the overstuffed pocket containing three copies of all the normal in-flight perfume catalogs and laminated cards, etc, and so I had to kneel down in the dark to fish under the seat for it. Of course, while I was doing this, the tv, which I had pushed up to gain access, fell down, trapping me between the seat and the bar holding it up. I couldn't lift up up again from behind me after about 5 minutes of trying, and finally found a way to crawl out from under it. I can't tell if the woman next to me was amused, annoyed, or just embarassed for me.

We arrived in LAX, and poor Jordan had to scramble, since he only had a short time before his 1pm flight back to Charlottesville. I took my time, only to find that the check-in for my flight had closed already. Customer service informed me that this was because my flight no longer existed, and at some point while I was over the pacific ocean they rebooked me onto a flight that closed its doors at some point around when I was still taking my duffle out of the overhead bin of my previous flight. 45 minutes in line later, I managed to get an overnight flight to DC with an ETA in C'ville of 9:30 am. To translate, this meant that before my flight even began boarding, Jordan was brushing his teeth for bed.

I was also offered some inane and semi-technical response of why they could not reroute my baggage once it was tagged for a particular flight, regardless of the fact that the flight no longer existed, and in order for me to recieve my luggage I would either have to drive to Richmond, or wait for them to send it to chicago, then DC, and then Charlottesville, but not to worry, I would have it by the end of the week. Jordan's luggage went missing in the fray too, but his arrived in 2 days, whereas mine took 3. And this, my friends, is why you should always pack a toothbrush and some spare undergarments in your carry-on.