Checklist Items for 2018
1. Quit job… Check.
2. Sell house… Check.
3. Get stranded in Narita, Japan for a weekend in August 2018… Check.

Wait… what?     Yeah, that happened.

In August 2018, I was on a flight en route to Manila, Philippines to go backpacking. Once the plane from Detroit to Narita landed, the cabin crew announced over the 1MC that anyone scheduled to board Delta Flight 182 to Manila that the plane was canceled due to a closure of the runway. What we later realized was that a Xiamen Airline flight had overshot the runway due to heavy rains and crashed, stranding over 200 inbound/outbound flights in Manila (including us). Check out the footage here.

But Delta, being Delta, set all of us bound to board that connecting flight up in a hotel in Narita complete with food vouchers for the entire weekend until the flight was rescheduled. That free weekend in Narita, Japan with a newly befriended fellow solo traveler from Ohio sparked my wanderlust.

In that short weekend, we explored a city that we never intended to visit, chatted up flight attendants from LOT Polish Airlines about how amazingly wonderful Poland is (which is important later), nearly joined a bus full of Jehovah Witnesses from the Philippines to their weekend conference because we saw a line of nicely dressed people outside the hotel and decided to stand in with them until we realized what was happening, and ate some amazing food. Oh yea, we also laughed… a lot.

Although I didn’t make it back to the Philippines that weekend, Delta gave me a voucher for my ticket and a free return flight home to the United States. That voucher was used to start my 8 month journey later that year, in November. But that weekend of uncertainty, exploration, and loss of control sparked the fourth and fifth items of my checklist to be marked.

4. Sell car to finance dream… Check.
5. Take your money, plan only 1 month ahead,  see what happens… Check.

The line of Jehovah Witness outside the hotel….