Departure/ 26 May, 2005

I was very glad that our flight was leaving at one in the afternoon this time instead of early in the morning. My Dad was able to give us a ride to SFO since he worked at one. I was feeling pretty stressed out...,being trapped on a plane, wanting everyone there to like me, etc. I had myself pretty worked up. Dad made a sandwich and a half for us. We ended up throwing away half a sandwich, but the sandwiches were a good thing to have. Arriving at the airport we went to get ourselves checked in and James was told that his name was on a no fly list. We weren't too concerned, James A. Campbell is a fairly common name. Got that cleared up and then we went to wander around the airport. We were planning on a sit down meal, but we weren't terribly impressed with the selections at SFO and we ended up with not enough time before they were going to start loading the plane. I got the window seat again and I actually made use of it this time. In 2003 when we went to Co. Cork,Ireland I was by the window, but after glancing out of it a few times it made me too anxious feeling so I closed it, but this time I enjoyed looking out and seeing the impressions that man has made on the landscape. It's really rather like looking at a quilt. We were over land most of the time so I had some interesting views and I wish I had had my digital camera out, there were some amazing cloud formations. One in particular was quite awe inspiring, a large pillar of cumulus clouds rising up out of a sea of clouds. While not staring out the window I tried to sleep, but really didn't have any luck with that. I don't think I had even an hour's sleep while on the plane. I did a lot of reading and ignored the in-flight movies. I wasn't terribly interested in watching them. I finished "He Shall Thunder in the Sky" by Elizabeth Peters and got part way into "Lord of the Silent" before we landed in Frankfurt, Germany. The staff at Frankfurt were nice and spoke excellent English. By that point I was just so glad to be off the plane. The landing was flawless though, I couldn't even tell when we touched down. Many of the passengers applauded. We had been in a plane for about eleven hours and it was miserably warm and stuffy in there. Why don't they make airplanes cooler? I've heard they used to be quite chilly. That would be so much better, then I could just bundle up and use the blanket they give out. The food was pretty good on the flight, nothing too exciting, but it was passable. The Frankfurt terminal was very warm too. We wandered around trying to figure out which Gate was ours since they had to switch it a few times due to problems and delays. After two hours we were on the last leg of our journey to Scandinavia and were on our way to Sweden.