Konnichiwa from Atsugi, Japan!

After two months of living nomadically without a home, we have finally made it to Japan! These last two months have been jam packed, with James traveling between Virginia, California, and Florida for training, a vacation for James and I in Savannah, GA, two friends weddings in Blacksburg, Spring Game, lots of visiting with family, two showers for my new sister-in-law, my brothers college graduation, and his wedding! Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we left for Japan.  We left on Sunday morning (the 23rd) at 6:00 in the morning, and we arrived in Tokyo at 1:30 in the afternoon on Monday (the 24th). Our check-in went surprisingly well, despite the fact that the Navy spelled my name wrong on my plane ticket.  The flight to Dallas was only a few hours, and we slept the entire way, since we decided to not sleep on Sunday night.  (And we still had to pack for Japan, since we had spent a week in Connecticut up until hours before our flight left!) James and I have a way of jam-packing everything into small amounts of time, and then desperately getting our stuff ready for some crazy move we are doing.  Such is our way our life!

The flight to Tokyo was thirteen and a half hours, but it really didn’t seem very long.  I slept most of the way, and James went in and out of sleep, despite the three year old kicking him and creating a great deal of chaos with the flight attendants.  We were hoping the kid would fall asleep, and when he finally did, it was on the ground, which just created another scene.  We saw the flight attendants quite a bit on that flight.  Long flights mean lots of food, although I thought three meals was a bit excessive.  Our first meal included sushi (yay!) and I was hoping we’d get more, but it was just part of the first meal.  When we landed in Tokyo, it seemed like we had just gotten on the plane, yet like we had been on the plane forever.  We didn’t really know where we were meeting our sponsor, but we had hopes of running into him.  Customs and immigration took us less than five minutes, and all of a sudden there we were, in our new home! It was the first time it really hit me, and I was excited, but anxious as I realized what a big airport it was, and that we had no idea where we were being met.  We wandered for a bit, and couldn’t find the military liaison, which we later realized was in a completely different terminal.  Thankfully, James had met the guy who picked us up at his school in Florida last month, so they recognized each other.  I was thankful, since I almost had my first breakdown when I didn’t think it was possible to find the people picking us up!

The drive from the airport to the base was about two hours, and we were exhausted, so I didn’t take much in.  The freeways looked pretty much the same as ours, except you drive on the other side of the road, and I couldn’t read the signs.  But, basically exactly the same.  We’ve been here almost a week now, and we have finally started to really adjust to the time.  In the first few days, I woke up at 4:00 am every morning, and I would be wide-awake.  Usually I need an hour or two to feel even slightly awake, and that is slowly coming back.  We are moving into our new apartment on Friday, so these nomadic Hokies will finally have a place to live for the next three years.

Actual Time to Think

I’m sitting on a small pier on the St. John’s river in Jacksonville, FL, listening to the waves crashing against the metal and feeling the wind against my skin telling me a storm is coming.  I’m a little bit chilled, yet I stay and watch the dark clouds roll in and listen to the waves crash with more and more diligence each time, and I feel refreshed.  There is nothing here for me to do but enjoy the sounds of the water and watch the occasional plane fly overhead.  The wind is toying with the spanish moss, and life feels simple and right.  A white crane is fishing on my left, oblivious to my staring, and distantly on my right, cars are scurrying across a bridge, unknowingly being watched by me as I question and contemplate the day to day life of their drivers.  How many of them, I wonder, are stressed out and running late, cursing the car in front of them for driving too slowly?.  How many of them, I wonder, are talking on their cell phones to double the use of their time?  How many, I wonder, are looking out their windows and admiring the beautiful river on either side of them, relishing in the beautiful scene purposefully placed around them? I am reminded of a country song I heard on the radio on my drive to Jacksonville, along I-95 in Georgia.

“So now I'm slowing it down and I'm looking around
And I'm lovin' this town and I'm doing alright
Aint' worried 'bout nothing cept for the man I wanna be
I'm thinking maybe it's time to be livin' the rhyme
When I'm singing a song about nothing but right
And it'd sure be nice if you would roll with me”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoPg1EG2AKk

The Great Commonwealth of Virginia

Day Four was a pleasant Sunday drive on familiar roads, up I-40 to I-81.  Southwest Virginia is always a welcoming drive, and even at the end of winter, when the leaves are gone, and the buds are yet to pop on the trees, it is still a very peaceful and calming place.   The drive was virtually on autopilot, since we have driven these roads countless times.  Angela and I tried to figure out how many times we had driven this stretch of road, but it was too many times to remember.  We reminisced about the many trips back and forth, and wore ourselves out thinking about how much we have done these last few years.  We sadly drove past the Blacksburg exit, since we were so crunched on time.  It’s not very often we have skipped our favorite place in the world, but we were exhausted, and I had to be at class the next morning.  While we had run into some traffic in Tennessee, real traffic began an hour from our destination in Newport News!  The 757 welcomed us with traffic and rain, and I began to question why we had ever left Southern California.  I had chosen to drive across the country on I-40 for several reasons, but mainly to avoid population centers and traffic.  And we had almost made it across the entire country without traffic!!  You can almost fly across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma with little to no other cars on the road.  It is perhaps the best stretch of road in the country.  I hate traffic...and will go to great lengths to avoid it.  But there is no other option other than 1-64, and we had to sit and wait the traffic out.  A few hours later, we finally made it!  3,000 miles and four and a half days later, AJ couldn’t be happier to get out of the car.

A Day in the Volunteer State

Day Three of driving started off great with a Starbucks Hazelnut latte and a Chick-fil-a breakfast.  Seriously, the best fast food breakfast ever! We left Ft. Smith and headed east, excited to only have two more days of driving ahead of us.  The Ozark country of western Arkansas is nice and afforded us a good start to the day’s drive, including a detour off the road to Arkansas Tech’s campus to avoid an accident (thanks Garmin!).  After Little Rock we descended to the Mississippi flood plain, and saw a more agricultural side of the state.  We crossed the Mississippi and entered our first traffic of the trip in Memphis due to construction and closed lanes.  Tennessee is a long state and our goal was the eastern side of Knoxville.  We were hungry and Chick-fil-a is our weakness, so we stopped to enjoy a little taste of the south, only to discover that we had stopped at an exit which literally had every box store and car dealership imaginable.  Presumably the only shopping stop in 30 miles, on a Saturday.  So our quick stop turned into almost 45 minutes, but after fighting crazy store traffic, we made it back to I-40 and finally headed east again.  We passed through Nashville before dark, one of my favorite cities to visit, but unfortunately, we had no time to stop.  Tennessee, while beautiful, is difficult to drive through at night with all of the tractor trailers.  But we had a time line, and needed to continue on, so we drove through the dark mountain curves praying that the tractor trailers were paying attention to us.  Thankfully we have driven this stretch of road numerous time and had experience with the trucks.  Plus the “E” was a pleasure to drive on it’s first trip across the country!  We cannot pass through Knoxville without stopping at Turkey Crossing for Jimmy Johns, so we stopped for dinner, and then finally made it to the hotel.  Time zones had been kicking our butt, and we had finally reached Eastern Standard Time... only to discover that Daylight Savings began that night.  So our three hour change in our body clocks became four hours, and we lost another hour of driving.  I would be fairly exhausted on my first day of class.

Driving Across the Plains

Yes...this post is from two months ago.  But, it was written two months ago, and it was quite the adventure, so enjoy!

As we drove through New Mexico, we waved to a distant mountain range at our baby sister who was spending her spring break hiking and repairing a trail in northern New Mexico.  We stayed at a familiar Holiday Inn Express in Santa Rosa (our Hotel of choice when traveling with AJ) and awoke the next day with hopes of making it to a Holiday Inn Express in Ft. Smith, Arkansas.  After leaving Santa Rosa (and my worst morning cup of coffee on the trip), I realized we hadn’t seen a Starbucks since Phoenix. It was an odd phenomenon, since they were on every block in San Diego (there were literally four within a mile of our apartment!). I desperately wanted a hazelnut latte and truck stop coffee was barely getting me through.  My cravings for frothed milk and strong espresso and that cute little white cup couldn’t wait much longer.  So we began day two with our tummies on the mind and voiced two goals of the day: drink some awesome coffee and eat amazing Blue Bell ice-cream.  Honestly, why would you drive through Texas without stopping to get the best ice-cream in America?  We drove through Texas without finding any Blue Bell, and left frustrated after spending 30 minutes looking for a Chick-fil-a that never materialized.

We passed a Starbucks along the interstate near Oklahoma City, but we missed the exit and figured there would be another one.  The next Starbucks never came, and to make matters worse, the Hokies lost miserably in the ACC tournament to Miami.  (Which we listened to thanks to the ACC channel on XM radio, the best investment we’ve ever made for a trip across the country!) And that sums up day two (kind of three) of driving.  We drove 610 miles, didn’t do anything exciting, but we did make it to Arkansas.  Thankfully James found Blue Bell at the local grocery store near our hotel, so our trip through Blue Bell country wasn’t wasted.  AJ chased his orange ball up and down our room and then curled up at our feet.  We were more than halfway to Virginia.