After a long hot day of touring the DMZ I figured I needed to be back to Nick and Nicki's by 3:30 or 4 and leave on the bus by 17:00 at the latest so I'd get to the airport by 18:00.
I showered really fast to be fresh for the 10 hr flight since I was so sweaty from the heat and humidity. Nicki walked me to the bus stop and I got on the 17:05 which would get me to the airport right around 18:00, leaving almost two hours, although I really should have taken a slightly earlier bus.
As the bus pulled out of the station I pulled out my itinerary to double check the details of my flight and felt all the air leave my chest as I realized my flight was not at 19:40 but actually at 18:40, an hour earlier than I remembered and only an hour and a half from the current time with an hour's bus rode still to go.
With that terrible, deflated, panicked, guilt-ridden feeling I realized I was not going to make that flight. There was no way I could show up 30 minutes before an international flight - they wouldn't check my bag through, and to be fair to them it would be surprising if it would be possible to make it through security and immigration in that amount of time. You can't even show up 30 minutes before a domestic flight and expect to get on. The only chance for making it on was if the flight was delayed, so I prayed hard that this was the case, knowing I was in a country that prides itself on its smooth and efficient transportation.
The bus crept along at 80 km per hour, an agonizingly slow speed when Europeans consider 120 slow. On the way there I considered my options and drafted my apology to Karyn. That was the part I felt the worst about because she had taken two days off to see me and I had blown it by my carelessness. The options I had were to try to get on the next flight to Seattle, which was probably 24 hours later, or ask them to route me through Portland if there was still a flight departing that night.
We pulled into the airport at 6:07 and I raced to the ticket counter and went straight up to the first attendant I saw who was free, who happened to be manning the first class line. In one breathless sentence I burst out that I was so so sorry but my flight was leaving in just a few minutes and I had to make it on and I would fly through security and please please please. The woman asked me where I was going and when I said Seattle she pursed her lips and intook an audible breath of air and said in a meek tone, "But there's no way your bag can get on, it's too late." I responded with more please please please and started to load my bag onto the weight belt. She pursed her lips again but called down to the gate, and from the "ne, ne" (yes, yes) I heard it seemed like positive news. She called one other person and repeated more "ne, ne" and then without saying anything handed me a boarding pass, threw the tag onto my suitcase and frantically enlisted some sort of bellboy to run at full speed through the airport to personally take my suitcase down to the plane.
She ran with me to security and got me permission to cut to the front of the line. Within seconds I was through and a few steps after that was through immigration, which I cleared in under 5 minutes. By lucky coincidence my gate was only 3 down from the security checkpoint, and at a full sprint I made it there in under 2 minutes, arriving at the gate, with my heart beating wildly, at 18:24, where I joined a long queue of people who were still in the process of boarding. In total I made it from check-in to gate in 14 minutes, and wasn't even the last person on the plane. Whether my suitcase made it on would be a question for later, but I had enough in my carryon to cover me for a day or two. God had been kind to me this day.
The flight was smooth, uneventful, and when I arrived in Seattle my bag was there to greet me, the 3rd bag out of the carrousel (as it had clearly been one of the very last to get put on).
Asiana Airlines is my new favorite airline, because they went out of their way to help me make that flight when they could have just told me I was out of luck. Thank you, Asiana.
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