Space A?????

Last week I was headed to Hong Kong to see Josh for a few days...but because of a severe typhoon warning we ended up meeting in Okinawa instead! Instead of taking the base shuttle up to the Narita Airport (as planned), I ended up taking a train (for 3 hours) to the nearby Air Force base and flying "space available" to Okinawa. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the military variety of "space a" travel...let me tell you, it is a very nerve-racking experience. You arrive as early as you possibly can to the airport (ours opens at 4am) and proceed to wait for the "space a" call. All the people who are waiting are ranked by their active duty and/or spousal status. Since I was a spouse not traveling on "orders" I was pretty low on the list....but amazingly, when I arrived at the airstrip I was told that this particular flight had almost 100 seats available. :)
The "space a" call comes several hours before the flight. At this time they call off the names of the people who are able to get tickets. On some flights, this still does not ensure that the flight will actually go to the destination that you are planning for. Fortunately, I was flying on a "commercial" type flight that has the same schedule every week - so once I got my ticket I knew I was going to see Josh in Okinawa!!!! On the way back however, they decided to change my flight to go to South Korea at the last minute, so I had to go to the civilian airport and catch a regular commercial flight instead. All this to say, though it's exciting (and FREE!!!) "space a" travel in very unpredictable!!