20 days of driving, visiting and 4000 miles covered, that was just to get to Seattle. 16 or so hours of flying and layovers got us to Kadena. If you so choose to read our journey, go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee and sit back and relax. Enjoy the ride, in the end I think we can look back and giggle at some of the stuff, shake our heads at the rest and be glad our two kiddos are such wonderful travelers. Here is goes….
Once upon a time, after finally checking out of our rental on Wed Aug 27th. We went to a hotel. This is where I first agreed that I just might have over packed....this might have also been the second time Ryan reminded me I over packed ;) I also seemed to have a rash developing…thought it was a bunch of bug bites (read on to find out what it was)
We said goodbye to friends on Sat Aug 30th and ended our stay in Hampton with Jayla's husband, Christopher's birthday. She had declared the night before she was marrying him at the party. We were sad to leave all the wonderful friends we made during our two years in VA. We then went up near Washington, DC to visit a friend of Ryan’s. They have been friends since like 2nd grade. We visited them for a couple hours and then stayed at Ryan's cousins house overnight. Aaron and Anita graciously took our 4wheeler to tinker with while we are gone. We hope that it is a fun project for them.
Aug 31st began the journey to Dayton, OH. While traveling through the mountains of West Virginia, Ryan called me and informed me that his truck was acting goofy. This was about hour 4 of our 8 hour trip or what should have been an 8 hour trip. He said it wasn’t getting full power and seemed to slip if the RPMs got too high. This isn’t something I wanted to hear! Well a few hours later, we pulled into a rest stop with smoke coming from under Ryan’s hood. My first thought was it was on fire. Luckily it was not. We checked all the fluids, looked for leaks, anything loose. Found nothing. Some of the fluids were a hair low but not low enough to cause problems. Well we ended up letting it sit for about two hours and then it seemed to work well enough to try to make it to Dayton. Well, we made it to Dayton to our friends, The Platt’s, house. After some catching up we went to bed with plans to take in both cars for fluid changes and checks and then have Ryan’s truck really looked at in the morning and leave around noon.
The truck...should we have sold the truc? perhaps...but that is neither here nor there. We have put some money into it and with so many new parts the thing should work and since it is paid off we would like it to last a little while longer. That truck has been from Wisconsin, where Ryan bought it, to Colorado (and back to WI many times) then down to Georgia, then driven up to AK where it survived many trips up the Hall Road when the boys wanted to hunt Caribou. It drove down and around southern AK. Then it drove back down from AK to CO, then to Alabama, then up to OH. She drove around OH for our stay there and then down to Virginia. Surely driving back to Wisconsin wasn’t too much to ask....it is her home....GO TO YOUR HOME!!!!
Anyway....after some testing, the technician said one of the catalytic converters needed to be replaced and of course you cant replace just one, you have to replace the pair. So while the truck was worked on we enjoyed the company of good friends. What is that you say, you remember something about a rash.....oh right, I got into poison ivy at the VA house and I am not even going to tell you about that....just know that even poking at the root from 4+ feet away with an ice chipper is not a good idea....So we were dealing with truck issues and my poison ivy...fun. Well we figured since we were in Dayton we should check out the rental...well we found out why it has not been rented in the last year....IT IS A MESS!!! Yes the lawn was mowed but that didn’t take away from the jungle growing around the house and the other trees that have gone NUTS! Isn’t curb appeal everything....no, well to me it is at least something...yes we know it needs some exterior paint but we kind of need renters to pay for that, especially after all the other work we have done...well so we go inside....we start with the 703 side. This was the side we were not living in. It was the side we had to evict people from and had the carpet replaced and the walls painted. Yes that was done but it smelled and there were ants making a meal out of one of the wood windowsills. This isn’t it my friends, no this was not it…..the pantry floor was black… yep mold. The laundry room that Ryan worked so hard to finish had molded due to the back windows leaking with all the rain they had gotten that spring. The upstairs was pretty good, the bathroom needed a cleaning and one of the closets needed to be swept out, it had mouse turds in it…. they were not clean people. I went back outside and took a breath, nothing major but still not how we thought, how we were told it looked. Then we went into the 705 side. This side had to be perfect, we lived there!!! NOPE! WORSE! We were told it was left in better than, condition with the gentleman moved out. UM NO! The carpets smelled like wet dogs, had not been cleaned and everything was dirty! I didn’t see a clean surface in the whole place. The upstairs bathroom was not in good condition at all. The paint was chipping, peeling, and falling all over the bath area and more mold. We NEVER had mold issues the almost 2 years we lived there. Perhaps if people cleaned and kept up (or called when work needed to be done) then we wouldn’t have these issues. Oh and the bathtub was grey….should be white. Can you feel the stress? At least Jayla was having fun with the Platt kids!! Calli was with us, poor kiddo.
Just to recap, poison ivy, bum truck, bum duplex…. breathe. Well, we got the call the truck was ready to go, well as ready as it could be. Still acted a little off but should be good to make it to WI for storage. So, on Aug 2nd, we left Dayton. Again about half way Ryan calls and says his truck is acting goofy again and that it now is really sounding like “muffly”. We stop and eat dinner and take close to 2 hours to relax and stretch out. The truck works again and we make it to Madison, WI at like 10pm to visit friends that we met when we lived in Ohio. We visit for a bit then head to Wrightstown, WI to Ryan’s sisters house. We got there at like 2am. Ryan had is truck looked at again after we woke up and it turns out the seals from the old catalytic converter were not replaced….they put new ones on with the old ones, the old ones blew out with the pressure from the new converter and the “muffly” sound was the air coming out of the seal….lovely. That was fixed but the reason for the loss of power/ transmission issues were not fully discovered. We stayed with Ryan’s sister for a couple days. Got to see Pamenter, the Wagner’s and watch Uncle Greggy’s race car race. He shares with a friend and they switch off weeks. It was his friends week to race but that didn’t matter to Jay as all she cared about was the fact that it was “fast like whitening MaTween” (lightening McQueen). Our Wisconsin stay ended with a night in Surgeon Bay dropping off Ryan’s truck at Grandpa Deans and Bev’s house, McKinley rolling in something dead and some manure and visiting Ryan’s grandparents in LaCrosse, WI for a late lunch.
We drove through to Sioux Falls, SD, to meet Ryan’s Dad and Jan for dinner. It was so nice of him to drive up to meet us and visit with us for a while. We then drove to Mitchell, SD for the night at Ryan’s aunt and uncles house. Jay loves Maylons and Bonnies. There are usually other kids around and many animals to follow and explore. She got to hold a tiny kitten with his (or hers) eyes still shut. She got to carry a fresh egg back to the house and even got “yicked” (licked) by one of the horses. Yes, I said horses. Jay LOVES horses and was so thrilled to climb the fence and pet these pretty ladies. She was up on the fence when she one of the horses turned her head and sniffed Jayla’s back…this is when Jay delclaired the horse was “yickking” her. We left the farm after a yummy chocolate chip pancake, sausage and fresh egg breakfast. For the record I believe that the taste of fresh eggs can make you forget any problems you have recently faced….they are so yummy that you cant think about anything else. The chocolate chip pancakes helped too! ;)
After Mitchell, was Rapid City, SD. Guess what week it was in Sturgis…BIKE WEEK! Who loves motorcycles…we all do! Jay loved the first one she saw and even the 1000th one she saw. Ryan’s aunt and uncle live right off of HWY 44 and there was always bikes going back and forth. It was so neat to see them and of course the deer and the fawns. Ryan’s mom is in Rapid City and Jayla loved seeing her. Jay is still talking about swinging with her Grandma Nola. It was so nice to visit for a couple of days and so very hard to leave.
This is another point our trip took a turn that we originally not planned. Going back a little. We told the guys who are supposed to make our move easier (HAHA) that we were bringing TWO dogs to Japan. We gave the dogs information to the guys and as far as we knew both dogs were coming. Well, Ryan decided to go in and check on how many bags we were allowed to check and mentioned the dogs and they were like well we only have one dog on the flight. Um, WHAT?!? Well this was the END of July right before our movers came and they had known since June 1 that there was not room for both dogs. Where were we in June? In CO, where could we have left the dog. Of course it was the size of the dog that determined which dog had to be left behind, they told us there was not room for another big dog. This was the first of many hurdles we would face in getting the dogs cleared for Japan. The travel office checked daily to see if another large pet spot opened so we continued getting both dogs ready to go just in case they both would be cleared. Getting dogs into Japan is not so easy, especially if you are not given the correct information. If you are starting from scratch: You need ISO microchips (international), 2 rabies shots after ISO microchip has been inserted, then 20 days after rabies shot #2 you can get a blood drawn for the FAVN test. The FAVN test, tests the dogs levels of the rabies antibody. It has to be greater than .5 (somethings). Then there are some forms to fill out. Easy right? Well, when we get to the final dog part in the story you will find out what our easy path looked like.
Ok where was I? Oh right, we are in CO dropping of McKinley. We were able to enjoy annual fireworks, to kick off to Western Welcome Week in Littleton, while we were in CO. The kids loved the show and even Ryan was impressed. We said our goodbyes and headed out the morning of Saturday, August 6th. We headed to Glacier National park to take some time as a family to enjoy just being together. We drove from Littleton to about Great Falls, MT, where we slept for the night. We drove for a little Sunday, then we were going to stop at McDonalds for breakfast. We heard something hit under the car but figured it was a large rock or piece of asphalt….we pulled into McDonalds and got out to hear loud hissing….air leaking from a tire. The rear passenger tire hit whatever it was in the road and had a good little flap that was taken out. We have known we needed tires for a while but were hoping to make it to Seattle with what we had so that we didn’t have to let new tires rot for 3 years in storage. So we put the spare on and had breakfast. We have a full size spare, so that was in our favor. We drove on since there are no tire repair shops in whatever town we were in and if there where they would have been closed as it was Sunday and small towns mean everything is closed. Then we got to the park. We drove the Road Going to The Sun, which is a 50-mile road that takes you through the park. It takes about 2.5 hours to meander through the mountains. You can take all day if you stop to take a hike or at every picture taking cut out. The scenery was just breath taking. Snow, waterfalls, mountains and the one glacier you can see from the road. AMAZING! If you ever get a chance to visit the park do so. I do suggest you take more than a day, go camping even. You have to pay $25 per car for a 7-day park pass….even if you are just spending the day/driving through you pay the full $25. We would love to take that full 7days to explore the park but we had a plane to catch. So we headed to Spokane.
We stayed Sunday night at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, WA. Their lodging was SO nice. The rooms were so clean and looked nearly new! After a good nights sleep we headed to try to fix the tire so we could still have a spare if needed but it was not repairable…not enough tread. We bought another used tire to be our spare and had the flat changed out with our old spare. So at least we had a good tire and a good spare. We drove to stay with my friend, Megan, near Seattle. We were stationed in Ohio with them and they have a son who is a just a hair older than Jay and a daughter who is almost 2. They all played together and had a lot of fun. We stayed there for two nights then went to the hotel the night before our flight. We were leaving so early and with a free shuttle to the airport, it was much easier than having someone drive us. While at Megan’s, we drove down to McCord AFB to get Bella’s health certificate to fly and the rest of her paper work to be allowed in Japan. Remember the stuff I mentioned above that they needed….yea, Langley had no clue to this list apparently….well they did just…well I am not sure what they were reading. 1. Didn’t tell us about the ISO microchips and as they are current yearly on rabies and were already chipped, they just did the FAVN test. Good news they have levels over 3.0 which is clearly above the < .5 required levels. We did find out from McCord that the microchips were the wrong ones…not ISO. McCord did tell us this right after we faxed our paper work to them July 26th, so we were able to rent a microchip reader as there was not enough time to re- chip and give them two rabies shots and the FAVN test…. 2. Yearly rabies shots must be re-vaccinated before or exactly a year apart….not a year and 10 days, this voids FAVN test, even though said FAVN test has clearly shown levels are high enough to show a history of rabies vaccinations. McCord did not catch this before our appointment (not sure what the read on our files but I guess not the whole thing) So, Bella had to have another rabies shot and a FAVN blood draw. No, we were not going to get the results within the 2 days of flying, so taking the old test with notes saying another was drawn, we hoped Bella would not be quarantined. We were given all the paper work and two copies and left hoping Bella would not have to spend 180 days (that we pay for) in quarantine once we got to Japan. While we were at McCord I went to the clinic and had my rash…yes I still had a rash, but not the poison ivy rash, that was gone. Another unknown rash had appeared about a week into the poison ivy rash but it had yet gone and was so very itchy. The doc said he had no clue what caused it but that it was not contagious, not bacterial, not viral, not poison ivy, not eczema…not a lot of stuff but nothing that it was. Maybe an allergy maybe a reaction to the poison ivy but nothing for sure. The doc gave me two pills and some cream and said good luck. The pills help but I can tell when they are wearing off as I get itchy again. Oh and the doc said stay out of the heat, it makes it worse. I told him where we were moving too and he laughed and said good luck.
If you are still reading this, bless your little eyes! Haha, Sorry it is so long, tried to condense it but some things couldn’t be left out.
We put the girls to bed early hoping a few hours of sleep would get them at least to the airport and checked in before crashing. We got up around 12:30am, checked out of the hotel, loaded in the shuttle and got to the airport around 1:45. We could not check in until 2:30am (the flight isn’t until 8:30 am). This was an AMC flight, which is a military flight contracted through an airline, in this case Ryan was the name of the Airline we flew on. It is first come first serve seating…this means as a family of 4 we wanted to get there early so we can sit together, or really close. We walk into the airport and there are at least 100 people already in line…..WOW! They started a 2nd line since the queue they had lined up was already full. We were about 10 families down in the 2nd line. A lady started asking for the pet paper work and put the health certificate and the most recent rabies certificate in a plastic sticky ziplock bag and stuck it to the kennels. That was the ONLY paper work she looked at. The line started moving about 10 after 2am. They actually started checking us in early. They were sending the people from our line to the end of the 1st line as they moved forward. Then when we got to the front of our line a man said “wait here and you can be next so you don’t have to drag all of your stuff through the line with the kids”. I look at the line, that meant we were going to cut like 50-60 people….I hoped we wouldn’t get yelled at since most of them had been there before us. We were checked in by 2:40am and had seats pretty much as together as you could. The plane had two seats, three seats and then two seats. We had car seats for both girls, which means the car seats have to be next to the window. So, we had seats that were two in front and two in back. We went through security and staked out a spot near our gate. We couldn’t get food as nothing was open till like 4:30 so we sat and had a few snacks. Calli didn’t take too long to fall asleep in my arms, which was wonderful as the terminal was FREEZING. I didn’t bring jackets for on the plane since I knew we would get a blanket on the plane. The girls both had their blankets so at least they were warm. Oh I did have Jayla’s tinkerbell blanket, which she let daddy use. Hehe. I was cozy with my furnace and her blanket. Jay played until the food was open and then went with Ryan to get food, and COFFEE!!!! We enjoyed some yummo breakfast sandwiches and coffee. I enjoyed my coffee until Ryan accidently kicked it over…he shared his with me. Jayla soon fell asleep on Ryan so he had his own furnace and blanket too! We hit about 6:30am and some lovely family decided to start letting their kids run around screaming…yes let them. When I opened my eyes they were standing watching kids gleefully run around and smiling at the kids…..they didn’t notice the daggers the eyes of other sleeping people and parents of sleeping children were giving them. Our tiniest furnace woke up and enjoyed watching the kids…. This was actually good since she hadn’t eaten yet so this gave me time to feed her and change her before our flight. Jay, our little bear didn’t want to wake up and Ryan luckily saw the Tinkerbell Alaska airline plane and told Jay to open her eyes so she could see it and POP she was awake!!! She was so bummed that was not the plane we were going to be flying on. We loaded the plane and took off without any issues. The girls ate some more food and then fell asleep, giving Ryan and I some much needed zzzzzz’s too!
We landed at Yokota Air base near Tokyo, Japan, nearly 11 hours after we left Seattle. It was raining….they said we couldn’t get off the plane as the radar showed lightening that might strike too close or actually strike us so we were stuck on the plane for about an hour before they bussed us about 50 yards to the terminal. We were going to get back on the same plane so we did not have to take all of our stuff. We sat in the terminal for about 2 hours. They did let us check on and walk the dogs. Ryan did that and said Bella was good and excited to get out of her crate for a while. The long layover did give everyone time to recharge movie players, computers, ipods….. We then waited for a KC-10 (re-fueler plane) to taxi out to the runway. They said because it was a fuel plane we had to wait till it was away from our plane before we loaded it. All the kids liked watching it drive away once it finally left. It is a really big plane. We this time walked to the plane since it was not raining anymore. We ended up sitting for another 30 min or so while some of the crew members redid some of their paper work. Japanese immigration/customs didn’t like the first set, I guess. So, we are finally off…we stop at Iwakuni, which is a Marine base on the southern part of main land Japan, before finally landing at Kadena. We were just over 2 hours late. After waiting another hour or so to get our bags, we walked out to meet the people picking us up. (Notice I didn’t say we had to show any dog paper work or scan any microchips…) We were welcomed by Col. Greene (Ryan’s new boss) and his family, Brian Bradley (our sponsor), and Justin Morrison (who Ryan is replacing). It was good they had two cars, since the cars here are TINY and we had a TON of stuff!!! The girls and I went with the Greene’s to the hotel and Ryan went in the other car to take Bella to the kennel and then brought the stuff to the hotel. Ryan said they scanned Bella with an AVID scanner to check her microchip…this is the chip she has…they didn’t need our scanner at all!! They didn’t even check any paper work other than the rabies and to make sure the bordetella shot was up to date. Both FAVN tests were not checked, nothing. Sigh. Now, I know that we were lucky to travel all military flights and land on US soil (on base) and that all the headache before was to cover the ‘just in cases’ but, I can’t help but be a little frustrated when all the foot work was all for not. Oh well, I know if we didn’t have the scanner or the paper work ready, we would have needed it. The Greene’s were nice and got the girls each a little toy and the girls have played with them non stop. Calli got a little computer thing and Jayla got a hello kitty megablock (looks like leggos) set that she has had so much fun with.
So here I am sitting in our hotel on Monday, while the girls nap and Ryan is in-processing. We have seen a little bit in town thanks to Brian for driving us around over the weekend. We saw a couple off base houses/apartments and are waiting to see what they are going to show us on base. We were told they had two houses for us to look at right when we got here. Again, nope. A lot of houses where cleared out for renovation and or ant/termite issues. Depending on if we decide to live on or off base we may wait out some of the base houses if they have one that we like that will open up soon. I will keep you posted.
Things are a little different here and it will take time getting used to. They drive on the other side of the road, the cars if course then are backwards (driver on the right) and the biggest thing is the language barrier. On base they speak English pretty well so we haven’t had any trouble yet. I hear they are pretty good off base with English and if not hand signals and pointing can usually get anyone through anything. I would like to learn Japanese and will figure all that out after we get a house, settle in and figure out everything else. We have been looking at cars. They are really cheap here. We should be able to get two nice cars for less than $5,000 total. We will see what we end up with. We can’t drive until the Newcomer meeting Wednesday. They will go over all the laws and how to drive here and then we take the drivers test! Watch out Japanese people!! Haha!
So, this was our journey to get to Japan. Even with all the speed bumps, it was an over all good trip. The girls traveled so well and for that we are blessed! I am so glad to have seen so many family members and friends before we came out since it might be a while before we get back to the States. Perhaps I will finally keep our blog up to date and keep a better record of what is going on with us while we are in Japan. My goal is to post the Japan updates on the blog, I will link them to FB so you know when there is something new to read. It will be scattered while we are still getting settled but I hope that in a couple weeks things will balance out and I can keep you all posted on this new journey.
Thanks for reading this, I really didn’t think it would be so long. I tried to be brief but I guess we had lots happen along the way.
We love and miss you all,
Ryan, Courtney, Jayla, Calli and Bella (we hope McKinley makes it out here some time in the near future)
1 comment:
Good to read! Please keep in touch!
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