The Great Escape

Last week I finally escaped Busan and returned home for good. I call it an escape not so much because I felt I had broken free from a confining situation, but more as a comment on the nature of my flight. More on that in a bit. Korea had become a little, nay a lot, tedious place to be for me over the last few months. Those little things I had enjoyed or endured with such good humor had become amplified in their aggravation. In any country where no one speaks your language(well?), even little everyday things are a little harder, a little more complicated.

Considering that my last few weeks involved a lot errands that required the closing down of accounts and cancellation of services, it was especially trying. So, I was overjoyed to see the tail of this airplane waiting for me at the gate in Narita airport in Tokyo. People say the Japanese are overly bureaucratic.. I might agree after experiencing this airport. I had to show my boarding pass 3 times and sign 2 clipboards just to get bused to my terminal. But more important is the story of how I barely got there in the first place.

This monstrosity is the result of two guitars, a roll of saran wrap and two rolls of duct tape. I had tried to get one of them shipped home but the cheapest and safest way was going to cost more than the guitar itself. So I hauled this green nightmare to the airport Sunday morning with nightmare visions of some airport official asking me to open it up to check something in it.

Bags checked without incident! I was down to to two carry on. The big one gave me trouble. I was pulled out of the line by an agent who told me that it wouldn't fit and I would have to check it. When she learned I had already checked two bags, she got ready to pull out the credit card charge slip. I wasn't having any of it. So, I went to the default position.. the one where I had been travelling for 10 years with this bag and had traveled with me on every major Asian airline without issue. And did she feel that the particular airline that she was representing have carry one baggage containment defiencies in comparison to every other major airline in Asia... she did not in fact feel that way.
Sunrise over the Pacific, as seen through the fog that permeates horizon at 10,000 feet and the numbed senses of a mind travelling against the time zone currents.

Touch down in Toronto some 23 hours after entombing the guitars in in a green coffin.

Good bye Asia, it's been fun and thanks for all the fish.