Home again
I’m back home in Champaign-Urbana. The flights went quite smoothly. I was worried about a short layover in Tokyo, particularly after we had to take a bus from the plane to the terminal there, but all was fine. I managed to sleep through both movies and a meal on the long transPacific flight, which made it much more bearable than it otherwise would have been.
My current, refined strategy for transPacific travel to minimize jetlag goes as follows:
1. stay up all night the night before the trip.
2. take melatonin at night time in the destination
3. get a window seat (which gives you just a tad more space for sleeping). If possible, get one on one side of the plane for one leg and one on the other side for the other leg.
4. take one of those inflatable neck pillows
5. take one of those travel blindfolds
6. take a bottle of water
I spent about 4 hours in the new Detroit airport. Thanks to the soon-to-expire WorldClub membership, I was able to take a shower and put on new clothes, which was wonderful. I watched CNN on their big TV, but everything focuses on Michael Jackson, who seems to be facing some personal troubles.
The picture shows the tunnel that connects the main terminal to the regional flight terminal. Strange music and a changing display of colored lights break up the journey. I haven’t flown on United in Chicago for a while, but the tunnel strikes me as a derivative knock-off of the similar tunnel United has at O’Hare airport.