Sunday 1 November 2015
Take the limo to the Medford Airport. Use your Global Pass; avoid all the lines; keep on your shoes. On reaching San Francisco, take another limo to Top of the Mark, where you have scheduled a facial and massage and dinner with friends at a 5-Star restaurant.
The next morning, the limo speeds you to the International Terminal. Global pass whisks you through the lines. You fly business class, and if China does not honor Global Pass, you befriend a woman being picked up by wheelchair; as her attendant, you swiftly pass through China customs, and there you are, all set for your first day in China.
How Not to Prepare for a Trip to China Leaving from Medford, Oregon
Spend the before-evening watching a rerun of Downton Abby, in which beautiful people who never are tempted to have a second helping of chocolate cake wear the most elegant clothes and enjoy six different wines with dinner, live in beautifully appointed splendor free of dust bunnies hiding in corners, and have complicated lives. At ten o’ clock at night, begin packing. Discover all the things you forgot to buy and do. Fall into bed at two am, wake up at six, walk the dog, and return home to discover the toilet is stopped up.
Climb on the Greyhound bus with your overpacked suitcase that is too heavy because too full of too many books and cannot be checked but has to be carried with you because you forgot to get the special tag required by Greyhound. Eat the sandwich you prepared for your seven pm dinner at two in the afternoon. Eat the snack you prepared for your late-night sustenance at three in the afternoon.
Fall asleep in the bus, until a leg cramp wake you up. Enjoy the rest stops and learn that you answer bien, not bueno, when compadres ask como esta?
Arrive in Sacramento, California, and sit in the Sacramento Greyhound bus terminal for two hours, listening to children shrieking, while awaiting the bus to San Francisco. Arrive in San Francisco at one in the morning and wait in the SF Greyhound terminal until BART begins its Sunday run at eight in the morning. Go through airport security and opt out; sometimes the pat-down is a nice massage. Find your economy seat in United in the middle seat between two less-than-small persons.
Soldier on. Remember that when you awoke from your half-sleep late in the afternoon in the California mountains, suddenly, framed in the Greyhound bus window, appeared Mount Shasta, glorious and snow-clad and gleaming against a bright blue sky in the brisk autumn air.
