If something can go wrong, it will.

-Murphy

It is said that every great adventure begins in a very unexciting way. I sure hope this is the case, since I am spending the first day of Project Marco Polo sitting on the pre-boarding gate at the San Francisco International Airport. According to the friendly folks at United Airlines (God bless their souls), there is an engine malfunction on the 747-400 scheduled to take us to Beijing. We are told that the brave members of the United Airlines maintenance team and boldly fighting with tooth and nail the “sky gremlins” that are keeping our plane grounded and that we should have a new “decision” in regards of the time of our departing by 2 PM (see photo).

Well, we were scheduled to depart at 1:38 PM. It is now 3:30PM and yet no decision has been made, and no update has been done to the light panel. Maybe they mean to say that they will come to a decision on our time for departure at 2:00 PM TOMORROW. I mean, if things are really that fucked, who could blame United for omitting that little piece of critical information? If I worked as a customer service rep. for a company as lousy as United Airlines, I’d manipulate the facts as much as I could too.
The big irony is that 800 years ago, when Marco Polo began his trip, I am quite sure that he did not have to worry too much about “engine problems” delaying his departure. Of course, he had to worry about the weather, broken horse legs, broken wagon wheels, diseases he could catch during the trip and so on. But worse came to worse, he could choose to simply continue to walk East towards China. Not that I am saying that I envy Marco Polo on this aspect. Indeed, I much rather fly on a cramped but climate controlled cabin of a 747 than having to travel by foot or wagon from Italy to Beijing, dodging bandits and crazed Tartars on the way. As much as this might have added thrill to his adventure, I think I rather travel without having to worry about being raped, tortured or eaten (not necessarily in that order) on the way. But I must confess that there is certain beauty in beginning an adventure without having to worry about uniformed customer support reps giving you lousy excuses on why your “history on the making” is being help up by “gremlins chewing the wires of engine 2”.
So, since I am stuck at SFO for several hours more, I decided to try to make the best of it, since I am tired of looking at airport architecture. So, I start to walk around to see if there is anything interesting happening that I can add to my saga. Low and behold, after strolling back and forth across the terminal a few times without seeing anything remarkable, I do notice a very frustrated looking girl sitting somewhere near our boarding gate. I recall her from before. I think she is waiting for the same flight to Beijing. From her face, I can tell that she must be almost as bored as I am. Since she is not doing anything interesting (and neither am I) I decide to approach and start a conversation. Hopefully we will be able to keep ourselves occupied for the next few hours.
It turns out that her name is Justa (as in “just” or “fair”) and she is from Argentina. Just is headed to China, where she is supposed to meet some of her Argentinean friends and travel across the country for a couple of weeks. Like me, she is unable to let her friends that the flight is delayed, which adds further into the frustration. But at least we are able to engage into some decent conversation while we wait for news from United. She is very well traveled, having been to several countries in Europe and the Americas. But it is her first trip to Asia and she is a bit concerned about the possible challenges she will face in such an alien environment. I give her the typical “it will be OK, there is nothing to worry about”, but the truth is that I am also very apprehensive. China will represent a set of new challenges, since I have no command of the language at all and unlike other countries that I have visited so far, the support infrastructure for foreign tourists is quite lacking and under developed. But hey, Marco Polo went to China with no mandarin skills whatsoever, and go “Lonely Planet” guides either and yet he made it.

Justa waiting for the plane

It is almost 4 PM now and we are told that the maintenance crew has to replace some of the blades on engine two, which will delay our departure even further. However, United is gracious enough to allow us to suffer this endless waiting inside the plane, instead of having to sit at around the boarding gate. So, it i stime to say goodbye to Justa and begin boarding (several hours behind schedulealready).
Because of my “Premier” status, I am one of the first people on “economy class” allowed to board. Funny how the airlines segment their customers, they break them down into first class (the stinking rich), the business class (the wannabe rich, but not there yet) and the economy class (the plebe). However, the plebe is broken down even further into the “premiere” and the true bottom of the barrel regular travelers. Since I am premier, I get to parade myself and my “lack of financial success” first in front of the “upper” classes, as I board the plane.
I find my appropriate seat, near the window, and I get a first hand look at the maintenance crew replacing the blades. Of course I am going to take pictures of the whole process and while doing so, I explain to the nearby flight attendant that I am taking those to post on my travel blog.

Gremlin hunting

United cleaning up the pile of shit they've caused

To my surprise, her face lights up and she immediately offers to take me to the pilot’s cabin upstairs, so I can take more pictures. I am not sure why she offers it. Maybe she is a PR aware employee and wants to influence in a positive way the comments that I might post on my blog about United. It could also be the power of my “premiere” status and a way to make the higher plebe more satisfied. Or it could be simply the fact that she finds me very sexy and wants to build report with me so that later she can seduce me into the bathroom with her, so that she can molest me a few times through this long flight. I am tired hungry and frustrated, so I will I will set my mind of possibility number 3. After all, some optimism in life can never hurt. The flight attendant takes me to the upper deck, where I get a glimpse on how the “ubber rich” get to travel to China. Finally, the flight attended proudly introduces me to the cabin of the 747-400. “It is the queen of the skies” she mention, with some seriousness on her voice. I just hope she is not that serious once she takes me to the toilet room to molest me. I take a quick snapshot of the cabin and run back to my seat before the swarm of the lower plebe entering the plane makes moving inside of the aircraft impossible.
Back on my seat, I meet the two neighbors who will sit next to me for the duration of the flight: A Chinese lady and her 20 something year old daughter. T is my understanding that although they live in the USA, they are going back to China for pleasure. They are kind enough to offer me their cell phone (and international calling plan, no less) so that I can call Youfeng and let him know that my flight is severely delayed (Youfeng is supposed to pick me up at the airport). But it is around 7:30 AM Saturday morning in China when I call, do I wake Youfeng up, and he does not sound very happy about it. I very quickly explain my situation and he tells me that he will check the flight schedule over the web before heading out to the airport. With that out of the way, I thank the Chinese women, sit back and relax, waiting for our final take-off.
After another hour of waiting, we are told that everything is done, the fan blades on engine 2 have been fully replaced and that we are good to go. The plane begins to taxi at around 5 PM (we were originally scheduled to depart at 1:38 PM). As we sit on the runnay, ready to take off, me and several other passengers noticed, by look at the window, large gushes of fluid coming out of the tip of the plane’s wing. Either this plane has a big ass powerful AC system and the water drain is located at the tip of the wing, or there is something very fishy going on. As if the United pilot had mind reading skills, the captain comes over the PA system letting us know that the plane is leaking fuel, but this is normal after an engine repair. The plane would take off as planned and there was nothing to worry about. So, the plane just had major engine repair, it is now leaking large amounts of jet fuel right before take off, but we have nothing to worry about. Now, that is a pilot with balls, really large balls. So, I watch helplessly as the plane runs over the runway as huge streams of highly flammable jet flue spills out in large recurring gushes over the tip of the wing. It is as if the wing of the plane itself was “ejaculating”. So as I have my face glued to the Plexiglas of the window, watching the background scenery runs by at over 200 MPH as the plane slowly rises to the sky, I can’t help but think that this is probably the weirdest and most worrisome “ejaculation” I have ever witnessed.
So, we are airborne now and there is no flammable “cum” coming out of the wing tip. I feel almost as if I should ask the plane “was it good for you?”, since I can’t dispel the feeling that me and the other 300 passenger inside have been mercilessly “fucked” by this plane over the past several hours. And worse, we did not even get to feel an orgasm.
At least now I will have the peace and tranquility to enjoy the rest of what will turn out to be a pretty uneventful flight, right? Well, not quite. It seems that someone at the “in-flight movie selection dept.” at United really has a very strange and sick sense of humor. You see, we just had a dramatic delay due to severe engine troubles. We took off leaking large amounts of fuel and, check this out; the first in-flight movie that they show is big budget disaster flix “Poseidon Adventure”. Now, I am not a very touchy guy, I am certainly not afraid of flying, and it won’t be a lousy remake of a classic disaster movie that will ruin my mood. But it was funny as hell to watch the faces of horror of the passengers around me were making as the huge cruise ship cap sized killing hundreds of vacationing passengers. I could hardily contain my laugher. Someone at United was really having a lot of fun at our expense.