Mike Gfeller's Blog

Posted By Mike Gfeller on January 3, 2015

We woke up early and packed.  Then we met Mark Warchol, a friend of mine from Rotary.  A few years ago both Mark and I were in Rotary.  He moved to a different club in the Austin area and I left when I needed to focus on completing my MBA.  Mark is an engineer and works in the aviation field and literally travels the world.  He happened to be coming to Japan the day we were leaving but we thought perhaps that we could have breakfast if he could get to us before we left for the airport that he just left himself.  It turned out that he met us at our hotel.  He agreed to try the French toast and so we went back to the Orchid Room.

We spent about 90 minutes eating, drinking coffee, and catching up.  I wanted to know more about his world travels.  He had just left Vietnam earlier that morning, and so we talked about that and a host of other things.  Wolfgang got bored and went back to the room.  I saw Mark off and went back up to the room to finish packing.  We had an hour or so to kill before the shuttle was scheduled to take us to the airport, and we had quite a bit of yen left, so we walked down the hill to the 7-11 and bought various types of Japanese candy and soda, including Lemon Fresca.  We came back, packed that into our bags, and headed towards the shuttle.  On the way we stopped at a pearl shop in the hotel and I bought a couple of pearls to give to Kris, which were not mounted but figured she could mount them however she liked, and then took the shuttle back to Narita.

No problems with check-in or through security, except that security took my sodas (of course, stupid me, I had forgotten no liquid more than 4 oz) and they took my sesame sauce I had purchased in Kyoto a few days before.  I didn’t care about the soda, but that hot sesame sauce wasn’t replaceable and hurt my feelings.  While waiting for the plane we went to the stores in the airport and spent the last of our yen on candies and souvenirs, including baseball caps of the Nagoya and Tokyo teams.  I also bought a nice large book all about Tokyo, the districts, and the history.  The flight was two hours faster coming back due to the Jetstream but we took the same general route which was an arc almost reaching to the Alaskan coast.  I watched American Hustle and Anchorman 2.  Wolfgang was packed into his chair like a sardine because he refused to put his backpack in the overhead.  He had a bag at his feet and his backpack in front of him so he was really wedged in, which also served to wedge me in.  We survived and arrived back in Houston.

The Houston airport was something.  We left the plane and I swear walked a mile to get to customs.  Once we got there the process was really simple and our bags weren’t searched.  The plane flight to Dallas was uneventful and Kris and Gunnar were there waiting for us as we came out of the terminal.  Gunnar came in and helped me with the bags and then we came home.

Once home the unpacking began and all the presents distributed.  This allowed us the opportunity once again to talk about the various places we’d been and bring back all those fresh memories.  It truly was the trip of a lifetime and I’m so very lucky and privileged to have been able to do it with Wolfgang.  Long after I’m gone I am hopeful he remembers much of what we saw and experienced during those ten days, because I really believe that traveling makes you a better person and helps you to understand other people and cultures.  While I started writing this for friends of mine who expressed interest, I realize now that I’ll want to read this for me in a year, to keep active in my mind the wonderful time we had and the sense of adventure we shared.  I hope each of you reading this got something out of it as well.

All the best,

-Mike

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