It’s lift off. I’ve walked Daisy and Darby for an hour, driven a car for the last time, and thanked my ugg boot slippies for a wonderful, cozy, surfer vibey winter. Bags are packed, Josee is cooking us breakfast, and Bob is acting petty as hell, presumably because he already misses her. The morning news is blaring via his iPad on the kitchen counter (a new trick), he is licking the knife he is using for peanut butter before putting it back into the container (“I can do this now”), putting the peanut buttered toast BACK INTO THE TOASTER (??????), and also, I catch him spitting into the bushes before pulling the car out the garage (this habit is a true rarity as it upsets Josée). On the drive to SFO (which we still verrrry much appreciated THANKS DAD), he asks me if I know where the US Consulate is in Bali…. just now. <3
Another thing - we have the Coronavirus to deal with. Short of delivering a draft of my obituary, both my father and Emma have been relentless in their pursuit to take this travel route off-course - keeping me updated and informed on updates, death toll, and the scaling severity of the situation.
Josée and I had a flight that originally was going to take us through Wuhan to Guangzhou and then to Denpasar. Wuhan, about two weeks ago, was canceled on behalf of the airline and the world. Guangzhou was not. With everything going down, and us wanting to avoid mainland China completely, after 7 hours on the phone with travel agents, our options were to 1. cancel the ticket completely, for a fee, and work with travel insurance to collect losses on the booked accommodations, 2. cancel ticket and rebook through different airline to keep hotel accommodations and general trip timing, circumventing mainland China completely, and pay 4x as we were about a week out from departure or 3. keep ticket and and roll the dice, doing everything in your power to stay quarantined, healthy and disinfected. We landed on 3.
Here's what it was like. SFO on a Tuesday is dead regardless, but with the air of viral plague surrounding you, it's post-apocalyptic. After doing that math on our plane, our flight is at about 15% capacity - passengers are loaded in the back given how light it is, to, as our booking agent explains, "avoid disaster."
And also, I am traveling with Josée, who many of you know and many of you love. She is living large in business class, I am with the cest pool that is economy class. She'll come back to see me on one of the flights following an unsuccessful attempt to coerce a flight attendant for an upgrade…via chocolate bar. "Sorry sweetie, I tried. Would you at least like this banana?" She is being served CHAMPAGNE UP THERE. But - Josee is an ace in any sort of disaster and situation needing to challenge authority (including customs - my kryptonite), so I find this kind of behavior acceptable and also kind of darling.
The benefit of a 15% full plane is entire segments of cabins are your own and you are basically assigned your own personal flight attendant. After a Naomi Campbell disinfecting sesh, putting 6 blankets down on the chairs and swaddling myself in another 2, I watch half the Notebook with Chinese subtitles, cry to exhaustion, and then take an Ambien and two Z-Quils for a full knock out. As a chronically light sleeper, this takes me down for about 5 hours. I wake up eagerly anticipating the other half of the Notebook, relent to more crying, and go down again for another 3. Caden vibes!
We land in Guangzhou and thanks to Josee's elite status, have a private sprinter van that delivers the 3 aristocrats in business class PLUS the Titanic stowaway (me) to the main airport from the tarmac. We are escorted through customs and security (batteries and aerosols are not okay there - my bags go through the system 4 times) and I appreciate her privilege verrrrry much. We head to a private lounge, where we shower, disinfect our bags, and check into personal mini-hotel rooms. Masks stay on. No food.
Final leg to DPS. More empty plane, I start watching Fleabag and dang it is FUNNY. Funny enough to watch scenes over a few times in hope to osmosis some of the delivery. We land an hour early to hot hot heat, slink through customs (YAY), and meet our driver Yoko who is waiting for us.
LET'S BEGIN.