Flight syndrome

Rangsiwan here, waiting for the parentals and Benito to get back from their city tour before we head off to the expo to pick up my race packet (eeeeeee!). While I’m here I might as well fill you in on our journey to the land of bread, cheese and booty.

Our itinerary looked something like this:

11:45am depart from San Francisco
5:34pm arrive in Houston

9:05pm depart from Houston
8:50am arrive in Sao Paolo

3:35pm depart from Sao Paolo
4:50pm arrive in Florianopolis

We left town in good spirits. One thing to note for the San Franciscan’s taking Continental internationally, there is no Continental desk in the international terminal. Head over to domestic. After checking in, forking over $100 for my bike and stressing over people handling it, we made through security, of course, first without mamaFasu getting the extra special treatment for her two titanium knees.



Of course she had to get the TSA person in training. What should have normally taken a few minutes seemed to take half an hour and then we were finally on our way. The first leg of our trip wasn’t bad at all. We’re talking a 3.5 hour flight and a 3 hour layover with no meal service, just a “snack.” When you say snack, especially on a plane, especially since times have been tight and they started making you pay for your own food, I’m expecting just a little more than peanuts and a drink (maybe 2 packs of peanuts and a drink or a two packs of honey roasted peanuts and your own can of soda). So the cart rolls around and what do we get..



Yes, the meals of bread and cheese begin right here, beef and swiss sub, iceberg lettuce salad and (yes!) m&m’s. Fortunately for me, I don’t eat meat but I do eat things that touch meat (to a certain extent). The beef on that sub was quite interesting. It looked of the burgers they served us at Lowell (San Francisco public high school) that back then, were yummy as all hell. But now, I see what they mean when they say that food in public institutions such as schools and correctional facilities are the lowest grade. (I can’t believe I knowingly ate that when I was younger). But I digress. The unfortunate bit about me not eating meat was that I ate the bread and everyone else gave me bits of their bread.. and cheese (let’s not get into the discussion of whether that was real cheese or not). What they also ended up giving me were their m&m’s. But exercising all full self-control, I haven’t touched any of them yet. They may or may not go into my special needs bags.



A funny and cautionary note about the Houston airport, the George W. Bush International airport (aren’t they supposed to name things after you when you’re already dead?), They’ve got golf cart service to help you get from gate to gate (we had a pretty long walk from ours). But apparently the norm at the Houston airport is to drive these golf carts pretty darn fast, especially when there are tons of people around. The drivers basically go as fast as they want and anywhere they want shouting, “Cart, cart, cart,” if there are people in their path. We’re not talking about a speed slightly faster than a fast walk or slow jog. It looked like they were going at least 5-6pmh, enough to take out and injure small children and the elderly, if not piss off a lot of people. Which was my biggest surprise, has anyone every complained about them? I’m assuming no since they seem to do as they wish. So a word of warning, keep your eyes and ears open while you’re at the Houston International airport.

The next leg of our journey from Houston to Sao Paolo took just under 10 hours. There’s really nothing much to say here except that the flight was long, the food was meh and the sleep was erratic. For those with special diets, make sure you request your meal 24 hours in advance otherwise you’ll end up deciding between chicken and beef, casting aside the meat and eating everything else, or just eating the wonderful iceberg lettuce salad. We finally touched down in the morning after ingesting our wonderful breakfast snack of a Pillsbury croissant, fruit and jam (no cheese this time).

After hopping off the plane we headed straight to customs. This had to have been the fastest trip through customs ever. Aside from the line, which looked a lot worse than it was, the customs agent didn’t even ask us any questions. He just checked our forms, scanned our passports and gave made our entry into Brazil official with a stamp. Next stop baggage. Then straight to claims, of which we had none. All we had to do was literally roll our luggage through the line and the agent took our form and we were free. I was worried about them confiscating my drink mixes, but it was such a breeze.

Next stop, TAM airlines to check in for our final flight. But just one second. Before we were able to jump in the line, the TAM agent took a look at our itinerary and notified us that the earliest we could check in was 4 hours prior to departure. In my semi-famous words, I uttered, “Bitch!” to myself. It was barely 10am and our flight left at 3:35. Not only did we have to spend another 5 hours in the airport, we had to babysit our bags for the next two hours.



Those next two hours were what seemed to last an eternity. This was where good old lack of sleep caught up to me. We found a nice spot to post up. mamaFasu found a row of chairs without armrests to give her back a nice flat surface to layout on. papaFasu and Benito took their turns just wandering around, so while I was “guarding” our stuff, I’d find myself dozing off and zoning out while I was sitting there. Yeah, not so good. We finally headed over to check-in to be rid of our stuff. It’s lunchtime!



Yes, your eyes don’t deceive. mama- and papaFasu opted for the golden arches. Benito and I tried to search out more local fare. This was when we had our first taste of the “official” Brazilian bread and cheese delicacy, pao de quiejdo, from Casa do Pao de Queijo. We grabbed a Brazilian coffee, two pao de quiejdo, a panini and another cheese filled pastry. No photos, they were that good or (we were that hungry)!

We make our way to the gate and mamaFasu didn’t set of their metal detector. We didn’t even have to worry about carrying water through. Oh the simpler days. It was pretty obvious just waiting at the gate that at least one third if not half of the passengers on the plane were going racing. Our plane ended up being half and hour delayed. We were all zoning out again just sitting there. We had been traveling for over 24 hours at that point and to say that it was starting to wear on us was an understatement.



After another round of cheese and bread on the plane, we finally touched down in Florianopolis as the sun came down.



We’re here! And yes, we’d like to eat .. some vegetables and fruit please..



Once we checked in and put our bags away, we headed off to dinner and toasted to a safe and landing into Brazil.