20230613 The flight out

Our trip to Norway was a chance to visit Jason for the first time in eight years and to meet his partner Sine and their new kid Lukas. I bought tickets using some of the signing bonus I received when I started my new job and I paid an extra $200 to get an inch more legroom which arguably worth it when you're going to be sitting in a airplane seat for 10+ hours.

This was my second trip to Oslo, though I'd scheduled this one later in the year so we could get out into the mountains. Amanda had never been to Norway and her concerns were mainly for places she could go to see new birds. She wanted to visit the southernmost coastal seabird colony on the west coast of Norway and this became the most memorable portion of our trip.

We spent the morning of our departure packing and setting up the house for Kayla. She was driving in from Sequoia with her two dogs to house sit while we were away but was scheduled to arrive an hour or two after we left. Part of her house sitting duties was to power off my UPSs in the case of a power outage and we sent her pictures telling her which buttons to press.

The first leg of our journey was a 1.7 mile walk, carrying our luggage to the downtown Monterey air bus stop. The shuttle took us on the three hour drive to San Francisco where we caught a 10-hour flight to Copenhagen departing at 9:00pm.

Scandinavian airlines is nice, on taking our seats they gave us a bag containing a sleeping mask, earplugs, water, toothpaste, and a toothbrush.

Amanda has some anxiety about flying and got a prescription to help her cope with the journey. She took one of the pills in Monterey before we left to make sure they had no bad effects but they just put her to sleep.

We departed at 9:00pm and most of the passengers went to sleep but I had difficulty sleeping so I turned to the in-flight entertainment and watched the entire fast and furious saga:

The Fast and the Furious
F9 The fast saga
Fast and Furious 6
Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbes
The Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift
Fast Five
The Fate of the Furious
Furious 7

I watched the movies without sound because the earbuds weren't working and I skipped through the boring parts. They seemed to get more and more outlandish as the series went on and I started to recognize the progression of cuts they used when someone was racing. It was like a formula, they would show the actor, then there would be a cut to his hand on the gear stick, then his foot pressing the pedal, and the car doing some ridiculous stunt, and repeat. Perhaps the most important lesson I took away from the movies is 'it's all about family, yo'.

The plane was dark and most everyone was sleeping when sometime during my valuable life lesson (it really is all about family, yo.), I heard a woman call out behind us from the other row.

"Help! He's collapsed! Help!"

Stewardesses and other people started to gather. I couldn't see from my window seat across the plane but they took someone and laid him flat in the aisle and started telling people visiting the bathroom to cross over and use our row. A doctor was brought out and people milled around for a half hour and then I guess whoever had the problem got better? Amanda slept through the entire spectacle.

Peeking out the window over Canada I saw lightning flashing in the dark clouds on the horizon. The extra $200 got us the best non first-class seats in the plane, in a row of only two seats by the window at the front of the plane with room to stash our bags at our feet.

They served dinner at 10pm and then we were instructed to close our windows and sleep. One hour before landing we were served breakfast (2 melon slices, a roll, ham, lettuce, tomato, yogurt, orange juice, coffee, jam, and butter with real silverware)