Departure
My flight left from Monterey at 6:10am. It was an international flight and they recommend arriving at the airport two hours early to give the TSA enough time to put on a proper security show but the Monterey airport is small and quiet and security doesn't even open until 5. As the date for my trip approached I considered my options to get to the airport.
- I could park along the road or at my old work building and risk getting towed.
- I could hire a cab to drive me out at 4:30 in the morning.
- I could walk the 3 miles to the airport (starting a little after 3am) or
- I could trick someone into getting up really early to drive me to the airport.
Fortunately a coworker mentioned she often arrived at work at 5am and would give me a ride. It was still pitch dark and silent when I arrived at work at 4:40. With my flight leaving at 6, I didn't have much flexibility in my schedule and was a little nervous when she hadn't shown up at 5:00. I was just about to drive out to the airport and find some long term parking when she came screeching around the corner in her VW bug at 5:05am.
For this trip I decided to travel light and it worked out well. Though I had one checked bag full of American gifts for tax battered Norwegians, I carried all I needed to survive within my pockets. In my right hand pocket I carried my passport rubber banded together with a single credit card and $160 in cash. In my other hip pocket I carried my phone - which was to be my chief source of entertainment and connectivity during the trip.
In my cargo pockets I carried a pair of headphones and another rubber banded package containing a toothbrush, a baby ruth bar, the usb charging cable for my phone, and a pen. I wanted to carry just enough stuff to survive if the airline lost my luggage or sent me to Moscow by mistake.
Even my checked bag was lightly packed. Apart from the gifts, the only extra clothing I brought was a fleece, a t-shirt, a couple pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, and a pair of shorts.
I've read accounts of people travelling with only the stuff they can carry in their pockets. One of the touted benefits is it forces you to make friends that will help you do your laundry. I think travelling in this way is doable but a little extreme and I worry about the undue power we give to security agents to harass non-conformists. In every airport where there was an escalator and a set of stairs, I took the stairs. It was one of the few opportunities I had to stretch my legs and the exercise was welcome relief when I was expected to sit still in a cramped seat for 28 consecutive hours. No-one else took the stairs.
Ja said that while visiting Israel last year he was stopped by Israeli security and questioned for preferring to climb the stairs rather than take the escalator with everyone else.
The trip took me from Monterey to San Fransisco and from there to Frankfurt and Oslo. I had a 7 hour layover in San Fransisco and the overnight flight to Frankfurt travelled over the Canadian border, across Greenland and England, and down to Germany. We touched down at 9am in Germany.
Thick clouds obscured the ground when we crossed the Canadian border and I only caught a brief glimpse of cars driving on the wrong side of the road in England before we landed in Germany.
It never got really dark during the trip. We travelled at a high enough latitude that it stayed twilight even in the middle of the night. Over Greenland I saw a weird deep orange glow shining up through the clouds. It seemed like the glow of city lights but was very, very orange. I tried to take a picture but my phone refused to focus out the airplane window. Twenty minutes later I checked again and the orange glow had grown into a smear of light close to the horizon. The in-flight map didn't indicate any cities below and I think the light was caused by the sun shining up through the clouds. It's position on the horizon lent it it's orange color.
The flight map indicated it was -66C outside over Greenland.
Before confirming the flights online and printing my tickets, the united airlines webpage offered to sell me an extra five inches of sitting room for $110.