The Longest Night

To say the flight was long was an understatement. It was the longest night

of my entire life. The airplane left LA-X International Airport shortly after 1:00 a.m.

(Pacific Time). I had been awake since 4:00 a.m. (Central Time) the day prior to

this. For someone who had spent more than the last decade living in the Eastern

Standard Time Zone, my day had already been an exhausting one.



My buddy, and one of my several travel companions, John, handed me a

dose of Unisom, an over the counter sleep aid. I waited until I was settled into my

seat on the longest leg of my journey before I popped the pills, and reclined my

seat for a comfortable rest. I was discouraged when I awoke a short five hours later.

This part of the trip was scheduled for thirteen hours, nonstop, in the air. Have you

ever flown westward in the middle of the night? It appeared to be 1:00 a.m., no

matter which time zone we were passing, every time I thought to ask the time. I

would have thought the flight attendant would have given me the time in terms of our

destination or our point of origin, but she did not. After about three hours of being

told it was 1:00 a.m., I thought to ask to which time zone that time report could be

attributed. She laughed politely, and finally decided to give me the time in terms of

our destination time zone. The lights on the plane had been dimmed, and most

people were asleep. I looked out my window and saw nothing but darkness.


I tried to watch one or two movies playing aboard the plane, but they

could not hold my attention. Of my forty closest friends, who had departed Missouri

with me, and with whom I had spent much of the last month living amongst, only

five were seated in close proximity to me. Of those five were only two worthy of

maintaining intelligent conversation, but they were both knocked out, asleep like

worn out toddlers. I repeatedly tried to return to the land of dreams, but all attempts

were unsuccessful.


Approximately five hours beyond my last efforts to return to sleep, I

became agitated and restless. I must have visited the in flight toilet facilities a

hundred times to simply have an excuse for stretching my legs and strolling through

the aisles of limp, unconscious passengers. I was relieved to see one of my

comrades, Zo, was having an equally difficult time relaxing. Then again, instead of

over the counter sleep aids, he opted for the free beer served on international flights.

He was sufficiently tanked when he literally ran into me in the middle of the plane.

Neither of us was anywhere close to our assigned seats, and the flight attendants

were subtly hinting for us to return to our seats. We chatted briefly until sleeping

passengers nearby began snorting and mumbling garbled, incoherent words, and

we decided it best to continue about out predetermined paths.


No amount of descriptive literary tools could possibly explain my highly

elicited joy when the cabin lights were turned on for the service of breakfast. The

flight attendants also appeared slightly relieved with the service of breakfast,

because serving breakfast signaled to us passengers we were close to our

destination. I could not withhold my laughter when I reached the realization that

after ten hours in the air, it was only 2:30 a.m. at our destination. Of course, during

our flight of darkness, we had crossed the International Date Line, so we had

entered into the realm of tomorrow without every having left today. Three hours of

flight time remained before we would be landing at Incheon International Airport in

the Republic of Korea. I was inspired to gaze outside my window and see:

darkness. I finally discovered why it is people say, “Time flies.”


Breakfast absolutely delighted my stomach and my taste buds, but I had

to admit orange juice had a slightly different taste on the other side of the world. I

also learned from the flight, and the following year spent in the Republic of Korea,

not all soda cans were created equally. Just before we landed in Incheon, I

watched with astonishment as a drop of sunlight struggled to creep into the

blackened sky. The color palette opened up like none I had ever seen in nature, and

I fell in love, at that moment, with a year of memories I would carry with me

everywhere I would ever travel after that day.


To briefly recap the experience, let us work through a basic

mathematical computation. I left the United States at 1:00 a.m. on a Wednesday. I

arrived in Korea shortly after 5:30 a.m. the next day, Thursday. I was in the air for

thirteen hours, continuously in the dark, without a single drop of sunlight until just

prior to landing on the other side of the world. I have never known a longer, more

restless, sleepless night in my entire life. This included the return trip home.