Guest Blog: New Jersey First Flight by the Dog Walker

I've never rode on a plane to go to a different state until last week. Ever since the time after my divorce, I had the thought that one of my New Years' resolutions was to save enough money to book a flight to New Jersey to visit my sisters, Drama Queen and Teach. I almost would've thought there was no way I could be able to do that because of other expenses, but since I moved out of living in an apartment and after the divorce, and with having a wage increase at my job and working full time, it would be the best opportunity to plan the trip to New Jersey. I started saving money and spending less in January and by the time it was February, Mom helped me with booking a round trip ticket in comfort plus. I'm pretty big for main cabin.

I was anxiously waiting for the last couple of months to get ready for the first flight of my life. And finally on March 7, it was the day of when the plane would first fly to Philadelphia and Teach would pick up from the airport and drive me to her house in New Jersey. On that night, Mom and Dad dropped me off at the airport and helped me understand how to board on the right plane. They helped me make sure my big luggage was boarded at the conveyor and labeled to Philadelphia and that I got a boarding pass and my I.D. with me. I went past the TSA security area and realized that my boarding pass got lost inside the conveyor. I asked a TSA employee to see if they could find it. They said they couldn't find it, but I could hurry to the gate where the plane would be taking off. I asked the attendant at the gate desk if they could print another boarding pass for me and they did.

It was quite a relief to understand how I was able to solve the situation and be ready in time to board the plane and go for takeoff. When I got boarded on the plane and sat in my designated seat, I was excited and nervous at the same time. Luckily, one of the passengers was seated next to me and helped me to understand the rules and expectations for being on a plane. The plane took off and I thought it was really unbelievable to see how high up were going. I had never seen so many patterned city lights from a bird's eye view. The flight was a long time and it was hard to sleep, so I watched a movie called Rumble on the little tv screens behind the seats with earbuds passed down.

And after watching that, I tried to go to sleep while on flight, but it was still hard when I was worried about turbulences, but I didn't feel any big bump while in flight, but just little ones. So after a couple of hours, the plane was landing, and it was a bit rough, when it came to the wheel breaks skidding on the runway. We were ahead of schedule and had to wait for half an hour for another plane to leave the airport.

When the plane finally parked into the Philadelphia airport, we got off and headed towards the signs for bag claims. I was waiting for Teach to come and pick me up and I wasn't quite sure where to find her. I thought she would pick me up in a place where I thought she might be, but it turned out that I was in the Uber area and a co-passenger helped me find the private vehicles pickup area. I found Teach with her van and she drove me all the way from Philadelphia to New Jersey, which was a 20-minute drive.

Her house was really nice, yet a little small, it kind of reminds me of the homes that my grandparents lived in in Ephraim, especially the stairs that were a little steep. They had a bed set up for me down in their basement. It was a king-sized mattress that was more like a love sac bean bag. It was nice and comfortable at times in the night, and it made parts of my body sore, so in the next nights, they added a mattress pad underneath to make it little less firm. The other option they had was to blow up an air mattress, but I told them that I would be fine.

So, on the times I was recovered from the flight and up on the main floor, I would hang out with Drama Queen and Teach while waiting for the kids to come home from school. When I first met Teach's youngest daughter, Twizzie, she was a bit shocked and confused to even see me. But after a few hours and a couple of days, Twizzie was always smiling when seeing me. And of course Twizzler was excited to see me at times too. Twizlet was happy to see me too. There are a lot of adventures to share with you, I hope Mom doesn't mind of me sharing a few more posts about all the adventures I had in New Jersey. For now, I thought I could explain what it was like to ride on the plane. I have a lot more to say, I hope you're looking forward to hearing more.