Tsukuba Monogatari: 27th post
Well, here we are back in Tsukuba (Jennifer and I both went home for the holidays and returned on the same flight). The flight was an hour late and ten-and-a-half hours long. We saw two movies, one of which you’d have to be strapped into your seat on a ten and a half hour flight to watch.
From our seats, we had an excellent view of the two right engines; so I checked periodically to make sure they were still fastened (we were flying Northwest, who had an engine fall off a plane over Florida on January 4).
The drive back to Tsukuba was somewhat nerve-wracking as it was raining, extremely foggy, about 2 am California time, and because Route 408, not one of the most heavily traveled roads in Japan, has about one street light per several kilometers, or so it seemed. Imagine driving across the San Mateo Bridge on a foggy night in a blackout – that’s kind of what it was like. You feel suspended in space, and you even lose the sensation of motion, since there’s nothing visual around you to indicate forward movement, no rear tail lights ahead of you to guide you. To keep myself awake, I started recalling favorite episodes of “The Twilight Zone” which revolved around someone driving on a deserted road on a dark, rainy night. Jennifer had not seen them; they were aired before she was born, I’m sure. We got back to Tsukuba around 8 pm, and were back in the office bright and early the next morning.
“Engine 2.” Courtesy of Mike Smail. Licensed under cc by NC-ND 2.0.
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