The Official Site of Maurice Edu

Mon, Jul 28th 2008, 21:13

Mo's Blog: China Flight

For me, flying isn’t too bad. Give me a window seat and I’m good. I can sleep just about anywhere at any time. Some go as far as to say I have a mild case of narcolepsy haha, but whatever. Anyway, I don’t know how many of you have been to China, but that is one of the longest flights everrr. I was happy at first because I had a whole row to myself meaning I could stretch out and lay down. The flight attendant made me choose just 1 seat for takeoff because I had to wear a seatbelt so I sat in the window seat. We took off, I put on my Ipod and after about 5 minutes the narcolepsy kicked in and I was passed out. When I awoke, I was surprised to see the aisle seat in “Row de Mo,” as I had renamed it, was occupied. Because the occupant was also a part of Team USA (swimmer) I let it slide. I had actually met her earlier in the airport so we chatted a bit before I went off to dreamland again.

You can meet some interesting people on flights. One of my teammates, Michael Orozco was sitting a couple rows behind me in a two-person row so I wanted to switch seats with HER. HER is the angry older woman who sat next to Mike. Never did I think it’d be such an issue, but can you say DRAMAAAAA? When he asked HER to switch she replied saying, “Why does it always have to be me? Huh? Why? Why?” He tried to explain that he and I were friends and that in Row de Mo she’d have a window seat and an empty middle seat all to HERself. She wasn’t having it and gave all kinds of excuses, one was she was just too lazy. That would’ve been a good enough reason for me or just a simple “no” but she went on and on while poor Mike sat there with a confused look on his face trying to keep his cool, regretting having asked the question. Then she was like, “If you guys want to sit by each other so bad, sit on the floor in the aisle one behind the other,” lol. At one point she even started to raise her voice trying to cause a scene. If you know me, you know I laugh at everything. So the whole time this was going on, I was watching from my seat a few rows in front just laughing before I signaled Mike to just forget it because it was a lost cause. So I stayed in my row, too far to really watch the movie showing on a big screen some 10+ rows in front of me, laptop dead from recharging my Ipod, Ipod dead from keeping it on while I slept so I had nothing to do but…SLEEP! And that I did until we arrived in Hong Kong.

We got in around 6:30pm (2:30am pt) and were greeted by some airport attendants as well as two armed security guards who looked like they were just anxiously waiting for someone to mess with us so they could show off their force. As we walked through the airport, there were plenty of pictures and videos taken by all the media in attendance. We got our bags and walked outside to the bus where we were exposed to the hell-like temperature of 900 degrees Celsius not including the humidity. The result: instant sweat. On the way to the hotel, the city looked real nice as it was lit up with lights and was near the water as well.

We got to the hotel, checked in, did a regeneration session in the pool and had dinner before going to bed. Its now 5am my time (2pm et) and I can’t sleep (where are you when I need you narcolepsy?) so I decided to fill you guys in on my day. We have breakfast in a few hours so I’m going to try and sleep again so I’m out for now. Any questions feel free to ask.

-Mo
(I don’t really have narcolepsy)