Well: I have once again embarked on a potential once-in-a-lifetime trip. This time it was 11-ish days in South Korea, which Elizabeth and I visited with her immediate (and extended family) for her cousin Michael’s wedding to Irene. Not only did we get to experience this with Elizabeth’s family, but we were lucky enough to have two friends (James and Moriah) along for the ride as well. Over the course of a week in a half, our travels took us to Seoul, Busan, Jeju, and back to Seoul for the wedding. The whirlwind trip took us to historic sites, sporting venues, waterfalls, spas, and of course, plenty of food.
It would be difficult to impossible to blog the entire trip, especially with other trip blogs beginning to stack up. So I thought maybe I’d try something new. Instead of writing about each individual event in excruciating detail, I spent a good chunk of the flight home coming up with a list of 10 things to remember from each day. They might be big things – how much fun was it to golf on Jeju Island at a premiere course? – or they might be small things – how cool were the flowers at the wedding ceremony? So without much further ado, here are 10 moments to remember from the first two days of the trip: the travel days.
Thursday, May 7th: OKC to ICN
- Leaving work at 5:00 am… Central time
It’s maybe the only time in my life that working mid shifts rebounded in my favor. Seoul is 14 hours ahead of Central time, so an 11:00 pm – 7:00 am mid shift was kind of like a 1:00 pm – 9:00 pm shift in the time zone I’d be heading to literally hours after finishing shift number 7. I worked the stretch with Matthew and actually offered to take Z shifts on the first 6 nights – no point in trying to flex the shifts. At 5:00 am on Thursday morning, Mambo Number 5 was ringing on Spotify as it always does for me on the final night of a string. Somewhere around the world, it was 7:00 pm on that same day. No more work for a full week and a half. There isn’t really a better feeling.
- Running with Scipio at dawn
We left Scipio at home for the duration of this trip with his dogsitter Tricia. It is (much) more expensive, but he sleeps well with her nearby and has plenty of flinger time, so it’s worth it for the longer trips where he loses a lot of weight at the kennel.
Unfortunately for us, she didn’t arrive until Friday evening. So we had to finagle things a little bit on our travel by having Sam come feed Scipio dinner and Moriah/James (who were flying out late on Friday and arriving in Seoul on Sunday) to check in on him Thursday evening/Friday morning. Sounds simple, right?
Because I am a kind and benevolent dog owner, I wanted Scipio to get some exercise before being along most of the day. So first thing after getting home (and being pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to wake Elizabeth up), I put on his collar and took the dog for a run down to his favorite pond. The eastern horizon shone with a predawn glow, the air was a perfect temperature for getting some light work in, and the bunnies were crowded in people’s front yards just to mock the dog a little bit. It was a final moment of serenity before leaving.
- The longest Uber ride to the airport ever
We didn’t have too much last-second packing to do, since Elizabeth had been attempting an all-nighter (she failed) and did all of her packing then. But there were quite a few last-second tasks to take care of, such as cleaning out the fridge and rolling the trash cans out to the curb, and our scheduled ride did arrive about five minutes before he was supposed to. So yeah, I forgot a couple of things for the trip (my laptop, any sort of jacket whatsoever). Nothing too consequential, it turned out.
Our driver was very friendly. Perhaps he was a little more friendly than I would have liked him to be at 6:45 am after I’d been up all night and was just trying to force myself to stay awake until our plane departed for Salt Lake City. The glare of the morning sun off of the right window as he took Shields instead of I-35 while sharing his dream honeymoon he and his new wife had just taken – it was a little much. But he got us there safe and on-time, which is what counts.
- Spinach wraps on the plane
I struggled to grow spinach in 2025. Luck has been a little better in 2026, though it appears some cabbage worms really went to town while we were in Korea, which stinks. But I’m growing spinach in my western bed, which is why I thought this plant in the eastern bed was a radish until picking it the night before leaving and realizing that it was actually a spinach volunteer.
I’m not a man to waste a perfectly good vegetable, so the last thing I did before we left Thursday morning was make tortilla wraps with spinach, feta, some greek yogurt/tzatziki, and cucumbers. Then I stowed them in my bag to eat as a snack on the airplane.
The first one, eaten from the second row a Delta flight to SLC, was pretty good. Admittedly, Elizabeth’s (which she didn’t eat until we were about to board for Seoul) was a little less tasty. But still: waste not, want not.
- No layover in Salt Lake City
Last time Elizabeth and I flew internationally, we actually jumped aboard a Southwest flight to DC and then flew with Pam from Dulles to Europe the next day. That gave us a huge windup and a lot of lead time in a semi-“traveling” state before moving overseas. Not so here; at 4:30 am I was literally at work, at 6:30 I was in an Uber, at 8:30 we were departing for Salt Lake City, and by 10:00 mountain time our small Delta plane was circling into the desert.
We had very little time to recover from there, either. Just a 65-minute layover existed between the connecting and international flights. That meant that by the time Elizabeth and I changed terminals (not a short stroll in Salt Lake), found our gate, sat down, and filled her water bottle, pre-boarding was literally beginning for the flight to Korea.
- Delta One middle seats
Imagine a business-class operation that is four seats wide – lone seats on the outside, with two separated by a little sliding window in the middle. Elizabeth and I were in the 4th row of that sort of shindig, her on the left and me on the right.
The seats were pretty comfy. I’d describe them as better overall than SwissAir’s business class, if not quite on the level of Lufthansa. There was enough space for me to wedge my duffel bag into my compartment instead of stowing it above, giving me constant access to my books and candy. The seats reclined all the way and there was a reasonably good blanket for sleeping, although Elizabeth complained about being warm (she is always warm). All in all, it was a good experience.
- Delta One Food Options
This is where things got a little crazy. Check out the menus we received almost immediately upon departure.
Elizabeth had already pre-ordered the Korean option for us several days ago. That girl – even when she’s panicking about nothing being planned, she still plans ahead.
Here is the meal in all of its glory. Yes, it was definitely airline food, so I don’t want to describe it as anything better than it was, but for airline food it was pretty tasty. And there’s something kind of exciting about getting the food served to you in little courses as you sit on an airplane. It’s fun! I even was brave and tried a cold prawn as part of a (mostly successful) attempt to try types of cuisine I wouldn’t normally go for on this trip. Elizabeth said “You did a good job” and that she was proud. I also made a vow right here to eat so much kimchi that I hated it at the end of the week – mission failed in that regard, because kimchi is delicious. A sundae and some port wine for dessert were the perfect thing to fall asleep to. Even more perfect was the Buffalo Trace and coffee to wake up to on the final approach 11 hours later.
- Sleeping – not as hopeless as I’d feared
After dinner, lights were dimmed around the cabin so people could try to watch a movie or sleep if they wanted. My desire was to sleep as early as possible while it was still something nighttime in Korea (2:00 pm Mountain time is 5:00 am Korean time, so 4 hours here would keep things roughly on track). And you know what? It worked. Neither of us slept enough to be fully rested (especially me, still sleep-deprived after a midshift), but enough that first-day adrenaline would carry us through to nightfall and jet lag would be defeated.
- Delta One Entertainment
Speaking of those pre-sleep movies: Elizabeth went with Wicked for the nth time while I watched Marty Supreme for the first time. No comments on who made the better choice there. After waking back up and still having another 6-ish hours of a 13-hour haul left to go, I ended up watching several episodes of Season 1 of How I Met Your Mother for the nth time while Elizabeth watched… something. I don’t know. I’d closed the compartment between us as kind of a joke, so she could have been watching anything for all I know.
One of my May 6th errands was to the Norman library to check out a couple of books for the trip as well. One was a historical booked called “Killing Crazy Horse” that I didn’t realize was by Bill O’Reilly until Winston pointed it out halfway through the trip. Honestly, it was a pretty good read. Over the course of the trip it was perfect for sitting down on a plane or on a train or at a pool and reading a chapter in 15-20 minutes. I saved just enough left to have some entertainment on the way home, as well. The other book I checked out was something like “Make Me Commissioner” by Jane Leavy. The book doesn’t deserve for me to go find its real title. By the time we were within 4 hours of South Korea I had read 40 pages and told Elizabeth “I get enough condescending ignorance in American politics, I don’t need it in my reading as well.” I then forced her to swear she’d keep me from reading any further the rest of the trip.
- Elizabeth thinks Scipio is forgotten
Like I said above, we had sort of a tag-team group of people checking in on the dog for the first 36 hours of our absence. Our flight also had wifi as long as we were over US airspace (which, thanks to Alaska, lasted a decent while). However, we lost Internet access over the final half of the trip and had nothing to go off of but Elizabeth’s growing paranoia that Sam had failed to visit Scipio and give him dinner as planned, evidenced by the fact that she didn’t see any Furbo notifications.
As we were finally descending into Incheon, the two of us were doing different things. I was looking out the window to see the terrain, buildings, and horizon of a whole new continent, while Elizabeth was connecting to cell service and scrolling back as far as she could on Furbo to try to find evidence that Scipio still lived. She could find James and Moriah’s late night visit and zoomies, but still nothing about Sam… at least until messages came through, and we saw that he’d texted us several pictures of the dog. Crisis averted.
Time for us to enjoy Korea.
