From Home to the Tokyo Airport - A Dad's Diary by Clayton Frech - August 20th, 2021

This blog post originated from Clayton’s Frech’s personal Facebook page. He is chronicling his journey as a dad with his son that is headed to Tokyo.

A Brutal Wake-up

After going to bed around 230am, my alarm jumped me out of bed at 430. It was one of those – ‘NO WAY it’s time to get up’ mornings… Head was pounding. I could barely see or stand straight. I snoozed for 15 minutes and then rallied. The sleep deprivation headache would not subside all day. We wanted to get to the airport by 6am for an 8:20am flight, so we now had to hustle… I scrambled around to finish all the packing, close the bags, and load the car. Ezra said goodbye to our labradoodle Yazzie, who we got before his big surgery when he was 2 years old. She’s 15 years old now and having her see him off felt like a bookend of sorts to the largest moments in Ezra’s life so far.

Ryan our videographer met us at the house and filmed the car ride. After a quick stop at my mother in law’s house to say goodbye to my 12 year old Gabe and for a traditional Persian goodbye, we were on the road. It was pretty surreal to be on the road to the airport after five years of planning and preparation and training…

LAX Drama

We parked so Bahar and Ryan could follow us through the entire ticketing process to the security line. I was able to get my ticket pretty quickly, but I had not gone through the United App to get Ezra pre-checked-in, and that was a problem. We had to scramble to get his information uploaded so we could get the right QR code to let him board the plane. That extra hour we planned was chewed up very quickly. There are so few staffers left at airports and the technology is so confusing (especially in our case), that it really creates stress for travelers.

Finally, we got Ezra sorted out and heading up to the United Terminal. Bahar got tearful as we headed into the security line. We couldn’t see her but she said she stayed there the entire time until she saw us go up the escalator to the gates. Our gate was the same gate, or possible one off, from where Bahar and I first met and started talking back in the Spring of 1999. We had been checking each other out from afar and I sort of made a move on the plane, walking by and saying “hi” but didn’t have the courage to stop and talk. But when the plane landed I waited for her. So being in the United Terminal always brings back memories for me. Ezra, now 16, has heard this story at few times but he seemed a little more engaged with it than in the past. Maybe he’s growing up?

SFO Flight

An uneventful flight to SFO. We landed and had a nice two terminal walk. Saw Josh George on the way to our gate. At the gate were our friends Isaac Jean-Paul, Wesley Williams, Lex Gillette, and Toby Fawehinmi. As we waited more team USA athletes arrived including a bunch of sitting volleyball athletes, including my friend Katie Holloway and Lora Webster (both of whom have an angel city connection), as well as some of the wheelchair racing athletes such as Raymond Martin. Our flight was basically entirely booked by Team USA. There was a contingent of athletes from Columbia, but otherwise the plane was full of athletes and staff. Really cool.

Tokyo Flight

We ended up not upgrading because the agent said there was tons of room. She spaced us out so we all had our own 3 seats to sleep. Ezra and I slept for about the first 4 hours of the flight. It's a 10.5 hour flight, so not that bad... Our sleep schedule was the equivalentof sleeping from 5am-9am Tokyo time.

I woke up at one point in a panic, realizing that I didn’t put ANY name tags on our checked bags. And all the athletes and staff use the same Team USA luggage. If the luggage tag got lost, we were massively screwed… Oh well…

So we stayed up the rest of the flight to start our transition to Tokyo time more formally. We watched movies and I chatted up Josh George, a 5x Paralympian and BBQ restaurant owner who will retire after these games. Really great guy.

There was an extra dose of paperwork to be filled out before we landed, all covid-related. I was pretty anxious, not sure what to expect when we landed. Would I have all the right paperwork? Would it take 2-3 hours, or 8-10 hours to get through the airport? What was the transportation system? I was under the impression I had to call a taxi. But I didn’t really know. You will have to wait for the next post to know what happened...

Mask All Day All Night

So to put something out there, we had our N95 masks on the ENTIRE trip except when we were eating or drinking. SO that’s from 8:20am PST until we got to our hotel room that night. Our journey door to door was about 28 hours long, virtually the entire time wearing our mask. We wore the masks while we were sleeping. It was miserable, to say the least.