And we’re off! … slowly.

Yesterday we flew from Minneapolis to Chicago and stayed the night in a motel run by a super sweet family. I think the hotel could best be summed up by Ray’s reflection: “Some hotels use the phone number as the internet password. The Regal Inn, however, uses the fax number.” A little outdated, but quaint.

We spent the evening trying to figure out our flights for the next day as Japan Airlines had sent an email asking us to confirm a change over the phone but never. picked. up. Ray finally called the credit card company we’d used to book the flight and they were (thank goodness) able to get us the info we needed for this first leg to Dallas. Slightly exhausted from an anxious hour of wondering if we were somehow accidentally dropped from the flight (spoiler: we weren’t), we nixed our initial plan to venture into the city (which was quite far away anyway) and ordered pizza delivery. The remainder of the evening was spent eating deep dish, watching The Great British Bake Off, and trying to divine the weather in our different destinations to decide where to go first.

Drumroll … Phnom Penh, Cambodia will be our first stop! Well, our fourth stop after layovers in Dallas, Japan, and Singapore …

We woke up this morning (was it really this morning?! Time has lost all meaning) super early to ensure we had plenty of time in case there were issues with our flight. Thankfully there were not and we spent a boring number of hours before boarding. After sitting on the plane for nearly an hour, we were deplaned because of a malfunction of the water system. Another long wait and our scheduled 9:40AM flight finally boarded at 11:40.

Landing in Dallas, we attempted to find Japan Airlines to talk to them in person about getting our boarding passes for tomorrow finalized. Fortunately, we found the Japan Airlines desk! Unfortunately, there was no one staffing it. Fortunately, we found an “all airlines” boarding pass kiosk! Unfortunately, JAL was the only one not listed. Fortunately, we found a very helpful American Airlines staff member! Unfortunately, they were unable to determine any more than we were and could also not get a hold of JAL. She was very helpful and assured us there would be a JAL staff member present tomorrow before our flight and helped us to connect with our hotel’s airline shuttle.

Our hotel is pleasant and I took the opportunity to immediately shower off the day’s re-circulated air and cramped people-ness, then we headed to Hard Eight BBQ for a dinner of … meat. Texas-style smoked ribs, brisket, chicken, and spicy sausage with sweet tea. It looked like a lot of food, but Ray pointed out that we hadn’t eaten in 12 hours, so … yeah, we ate it all.

Now we are headed to bed early-ish in anticipation of a loooong travel day tomorrow. Wish us luck and we’ll see you on the other side of the world!