My boarding pass said that the flight was leaving at 4 a.m.
The Royal Jordanian agent told me that I should be at the gate no later than 2:30 a.m.
This wasn’t a big deal.
After all, nothing in the airport was open at this hour anyway.
What else was I going to do?
I made it through security without any issues.
After passing through Reagan security three times in one day, going through one metal detector at JFK seemed like a breeze.
I sat by the gate and was reassured to actually see a plane out on the tarmac.
Lots of Arab families began to fill the seating area.
There were many kids running around, screaming and crying.
I was about to get on an 11-hour flight and I hoped that all these kids would either chill out or at least not be seated next to me.
I struggled to stay awake as 2:30 a.m. came and went. The man at the desk put out food and beverages for us as we continued to wait to board.
From a distance it looked like he was giving away glazed donuts, which would have hit the spot perfectly.
What I found was a piece of bread with a slice of cheese in it. It was wrapped in plastic, which gave it the appearance of a sticky glaze from the distance.
“Whatever,” I thought as I grabbed one.
We boarded sometime after 3:30 a.m.
I was seated in the middle section of the middle row, seat 19F.
I didn’t see many kids sitting around me and I somewhat nervously waited to discover who would be sitting on either side of me.
It could be a very tight flight depending on the size of my neighbors.
As more and more passengers took their seats, it seemed that I might be the only person seated in my row.
“I wonder if I could sprawl out and sleep across all four seats,” I thought.
The airplane was eventually sealed and I still had no neighbors.
One man moved into my row a seat away from me.
We both had plenty of space and this also helped the man he had been sitting next to, who was pinned against a window.
Again, I fell asleep before takeoff.
The rush and excitement of air travel has seemed to fade away with me.
The flight attendant had given me a set of earphones and eye covers, which I put down on the seat next to me.
I took out my ipod, place it on the same seat and fell asleep within minutes.
I woke up to a dark and silent plane.
It was eerie to look out and see rows of heads bob and sway in unison with the turbulence of the airplane.
Almost everyone was asleep.
But the most startling discovery was that I had a new neighbor.
I looked over to my right, which was the seat that I had placed all my stuff in, and saw an older man in a deep sleep.
“Oh, OK,” I thought, “This is a little weird. Where did this guy come from?”
The man was snoring, he wasn’t wearing shoes and he continually slumped into my area.
His advance eventually won him full reign of the armrest that we both shared.
Still, I had an empty seat to my left that I could lean into and avoid his invading force.
But he wasn’t just conquering territory. He was taking hostages.
My earphones were gone and he was wearing the eye cover that the flight attendant had given me.
He had helped himself to whatever was placed on the seat.
But the biggest casualty was that he was sitting on my ipod.
Trapped under this snoring old man was my small helpless mp3 player.
The playlist had ended so I was now wearing earbuds that just played silence.
I couldn’t watch the in-flight movie because this man’s ass was right on top of where the earbuds plug into the ipod.
I realized that I had to do something.
This was a long flight and it would be even longer if I didn’t have anything to listen to.
So I gently pushed on the man’s arm, which was now advancing past the armrest and breaching the divide between seats.
He let out an extra loud snore, readjusted and leaned away from me.
I had gotten him to retreat some but he still had my ipod hostage.
This guy was clever.
Thankfully, since everyone else on the plane was asleep it was fairly quiet and I was able to fall asleep without my music.
I woke up again to find my slumbering neighbor still by my side.
But he had moved again and I could see my ipod.
He was sitting on one end of it, which leveraged the free end up in the air. It was almost reaching out to me for help.
Without hesitation I went in for the rescue.
I got a firm grip on my ipod and pulled it free when the man took a deep breath.
Victory was mine. I had my ipod back.
Shortly after, the man woke up and left.
I thought he had gone to the lavatory and would return but he never came back.
The rest of the flight was a series of naps, movies and meals.
I read up on the literature Merissa had sent us about Jordan.
I watched some movies on my itouch and on the plane’s TV.
I listened to my ipod that was now free from captivity.
The flight didn’t seem too long until the final two hours.
There was a map of our flight that made it look like we were very close to Amman but still had two hours to go.
Perhaps I was just getting excited or was finally at my wits end but the final leg of the flight was very trying as I anticipated my long overdue arrival in Jordan.
We landed around 10 p.m. amid applause from the other passengers.
The landing was particularly smooth but I had never considered applauding the pilot for his successful task.
I had finally made it to Jordan.
I exchanged some money, easily made it through customs and picked up my luggage in 15 minutes.
The planes, trains and automobiles side-story of my trip was over.
That’s at least what I had thought.
I now had to fetch a taxi and get a ride to the Le Royal Hotel.
I found a cab driver outside the airport, showed him the address to the hotel and off we went.
Driving to Amman at night gave Jordan an added hint of mystery.
I could barely make out the outlines of buildings and houses along the highway as we drove in almost complete darkness.
I could see the mansions along the highway that my former professor, Dave Burns, told me about.
Wealthy Iraqi refugees, who fled their country in the Gulf Wars, inhabit these huge houses.
Other buildings looked abandoned or incomplete and reminded me of the Call of Duty video game.
I was surprised to see a fair amount of police stationed along the highway as they set up speed traps.
My first impression of Jordan traffic was that it’s pretty manageable.
The driving seemed safe and I never feared for my life on the way to the hotel, which is more than you can say about some New York City taxis.
The driving must be safe because people seem to just pull off the highway and hang out.
All along the side road from the airport I saw cars pulled over with people sitting around and hanging out. They would sit in front of the car and use its headlights to help them with whatever they were doing.
Traffic picked up as we got closer to Amman.
There were more lights and buildings as we weaved through the country’s capitol.
There were also lots of posters of His Majesty King Abdullah bin al-Hussein II and his father, the late King Hussein bin Talal.
As we emerged from a tunnel, a towering building appeared ahead of us.
“This is Le Royal,” the cab driver said to me.
“Oh wow,” I said in awe as we pulled up.
The cab was scanned for bomb materials before the concierge lowered a barricade and allowed the car to pull up by the door.
All my bags where then put through an x-ray machine before they were brought into the building.
I got a small laugh out of explaining to the man running the x-ray machine that my camera bag had a stick microphone in it.
He was concerned with the microphone that, when looking at it with the x-ray machine, resembled a “toy” that is meant to be like a part of the male anatomy.
Pornography, after all, is not allowed in the country.
After checking in, I made it up to my room on the 13th floor.
The view from my room was amazing and I could not wait to see it in the daytime.
I had finally made it to Jordan and spent the night in a bed for the first time in 48 hours.
The next objective was to track down the rest of my press group and catch up on what I had missed.
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