Travelling to China

This week has been hectic. It has been so hard for me to focus at work (as an Electrical Engineer) when a trip to China with the Golden State Warriors is just around the corner. Not only did I need to get myself in a position at work where I could be on standby for a week, but I also needed to get packed for a week that had no final itinerary until Thursday. Yet, after a little extra focus, and calling in "sick" to take an extra day to pack, I finally felt truly excited for the trip.

2:00pm, Stanford University vs. ASU football game. After three quarters of grueling excitement, the game was tied at 17 and I needed to get on my way to Oracle Arena to drop off my luggage before tip-off of the first 08-09 pre-season game verses the brand new Oklahoma City Thunder, previously known as the Seattle Super Sonics.

At 7:00pm, all the Warrior Girls were together in the locker room (minus the three who arrived late) to distribute new warm-up jackets and pants and by 7:30pm, the 17 dressed up girls were seated in the back row of section 121 of the Oracle Arena.

"Brett wants us to leave before fourth quarter starts so we don't hit traffic on the way to the airport."

With that said, eleven of the girls got up from their seats at two minutes left in the third quarter and all reconvened in the overflow parking lot of Kaiser Air.

Each girl began to dig in their carry-on bags to search for some comfortable clothes to get changed into for the 16 hours and 50 minutes we would be on a chartered plane.

As we entered the lobby of Kaiser Air, a line was being formed for a security check. After being given our passport and boarding pass, each of our bags were thoroughly checked, followed by being given a little goodie bag before getting into a shuttle that drove us to our plane.

I was amazed by what were given; a china travel book, a survival bag containing wet wipes, hand sanitizer, Alka Seltzer, mints and a nutrition bar, and a special NBA customized "flip" video recorder! Now we had no excuse for not documenting any important memories that will be made during our trip to China.

Girls love taking photos and after being dropped off at the foot of the stairs that led to the cabin of our gigantic plane, we realized we had a good two hours to kill before take-off. Six of us definitely took advantage of this and used this time to take tons of photos in front of the aircraft (with help from a few airline staff members).

After already having so much fun (prior to even boarding the plane!), we all climbed up the stairs to our cabin and chose our row of seats to designate as our bed for the long flight. Some chose the three seats that sat next to a wall/window, but I chose the middle 4-seater, so I could completely extend my body while I slept. Sleep was something I seriously need to catch up on after a long week.

"Help yourselves to the taco bar."

A taco bar on board? In no time, everyone was surrounding the galley area. Not only were there make-your-own chicken and beef tacos, there were sliders, short ribs, chicken wings, chips, nuts, and candy. There was also an assortment of beverages and the bottled waters were definitely something we took advantage of as we packed a few in our carry-ons to drink while in China.

3:59am, Anchorage, Alaska. The 5-hour flight did not feel long at all. It may have been because I slept for at least 4 hours of it. We had ninety minutes before our 11-hour, 50-minutes flight to China, so we decided to spend that time off the plane, in the terminal.

Why did I feel like we skipped Alaska and went straight to China? All the signs were written in Chinese as a second language. Who would ever think that Alaska had such a high Asian population? It didn't occur to me then, that we would be spending time in the China Air Terminal.

A few people began to take photos of the extremely tall men that were unloading from our plane. How often do you see and NBA player walking through the terminals of China Air?

After waiting in a woman's bathroom line, brushing our teeth, and touching up on our make-up, we found ourselves back in our row of airplane seats, ready for take off (with a brand new crew). I didn't know if I was ready for the long flight, but I was sure that it wouldn't be hard for me to go back to sleep for at least half of the time.

After the cabin darkened, the plane was back in the air and I went back to extending my body on my "bed." The next thing I knew, I overheard someone state, "Five hours left until we land inn good old China."

After several games of "Family Feud," and "Catch Phrase", everyone started to feel really anxious.

"A few more hours?!?" It was time to watch a movie, read a book, snack some more or go back to sleep to make the time go by faster.