Mere hours after the devastating results of the 2016 United States presidential election, I sat on the floor at gate N11 in SeaTac airport, waiting for the first of three flights that would take me from Washington State, to New York, then Qatar, before finally delivering me to Sofia, Bulgaria 36 hours later. As I sat there I pondered the uncertainty of the future, both my personal future and the future of the country I have always called home. I have always tried to take control over my life, but over the past couple of months I had finally started to accept that that would never truly happen. I didn’t have a plan. Not a real one anyway. I did have a plane ticket though.
Amidst all the uncertainty there were a few things I knew for sure. I knew that the world had just become a much scarier place. One of the most powerful nations on the planet had just elected a man whose only clear platform stance was hate. I was angry, but that was not the dominant emotion I felt about the situation. Mostly I just felt sad. Sad that our nation, which was supposed to be a beacon of tolerance, had taken such a huge step backwards. Sad that my country had been sold off in a reality show presidential campaign.
I also knew that I would be out of the country for at least a couple of months, and possibly much longer. I had no idea how long it would end up being, or where all I would end up going, other than to Bulgaria, where I would be living with friends for a little while, but I knew that my life would be radically different than it had ever been before and that the experiences I had on this adventure would forever change me.
Finally, I knew that whatever should happen on my travels and with the world in general, that I have wonderful friends and family who support me in my endeavors, even if they worry and may prefer that I take a different path. This is the most important of the things I know because these people give me the courage I need to go out and embrace the world and all it has to offer with open arms.
So, putting aside my anxiety over the uncertainty of the future (and the seriousness of the beginning of this post), I focused on the excitement of the adventure that lay before me. My travels got off on the right foot when the flight attendant came by during drink service on my first flight and offered me a free alcoholic beverage because I was stuck in the worst seat on the plane in the back by the toilets. Score. A little bit of vodka to get me going. On an odd note, I’m not sure where it was coming from but I swear there was a cat on the plane from Seattle to New York. As hard as I searched though, I could not seem to find it and didn’t see anyone with a cat carrier when boarding or disembarking the plane. I kept hearing muffled meowing though. Nobody else seemed to notice. It was weird.
The only thing I have to say about the JFK airport is that it’s shitty. I don’t think it warrants any more of my time than that.
It was weird watching the news between my flights. There are always people who are upset after an election but the number of large protests and the level of discontent was beyond anything I had witnessed before. It was kind of surreal.
The plane from New York to Qatar was the nicest plane I have ever been on, and for most of the flight I didn’t have someone sitting right beside me which was also a big plus. After a few movies, some reading and writing, and about 15 minutes of sleep we landed in Doha. The airport there is quite interesting with a giant yellow teddy bear that appears to be getting a perm and several cool metal sculptures that doubled as playgrounds for kids.
I was restless and ended up doing several laps in my seven plus hour layover there and now know that airport quite well. On my flight to Sofia I saw one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. I tried to take pictures of it but they in no way did it justice, especially because part of what made it so beautiful was the way that the clouds were moving across the sun as it went down. Maybe a video would have been able to capture it a little bit better.
During my voyage my sense of time really started to get funky. I had woken up around 8am on a Wednesday and my flight to New York didn’t leave until after 9:40pm, when I got on that flight which was a 5 hour and 20 minute flight I set my watch ahead three hours to New York time, so it was then 12:40am on Thursday. I got in to New York at 6am and had a 5 hour layover there, before my flight to Doha which left at 11am and was a 12 hour and 20 minute flight. Once again on the flight I set my watch forward to the time of arrival. Doha is 8 hours ahead of New York so when I got on the plane time jumped ahead to 7pm and I arrived in Doha at 7:20am on Friday. After a 7 hour and 10 minute layover in Doha I boarded my flight to Sofia, which was a 5 hour and 15 minute flight, taking me back one hour. So I boarded that flight at 2:30pm, set my watch back to 1:30pm and finally arrived in Sofia at 6:45pm on Friday. My buddy met me at the airport and I dropped my stuff at his apartment and then we went out and got some dinner, before going back to his place and catching up until around 1:30am on Saturday. Other than about 15 minutes on my flight from New York to Doha and 20 minutes on my flight to Sofia, I hadn’t slept at all during my travels so I was quite exhausted at this point but had to write an email to my mother and my friend back in Tacoma letting them know I had arrived safely. It took me almost half an hour to type a couple of sentences to both of them due to my exhaustion. I kept hallucinating that I was writing and then coming out of it and realizing that the screen was still blank. After I finally managed to actually type words and send the emails off I passed out around 2am. So, for those of you that weren’t able to keep up with all of the numbers (kudos if you did), I had 35 hours and 5 minutes of total travel time (22 hours and 55 minutes of flight time and 12 hours and 10 minutes of layover time) and was awake for 56 straight hours minus the 35 minutes or so that I slept on my second and third flight. The exhaustion brought on by sleep deprivation brought back memories of my days of working four jobs while saving up for this adventure. Needless to say I very much enjoyed the 9 straight hours of uninterrupted sleep I then got (the longest I had slept straight in years).
And with that, the adventure had begun.