Travel Day 1 29SEPT07

Adam asked for a blog, so here goes...enjoy because I doubt they'll last long...

It's about 4AM and I'm just north of where I-5 crosses I-80, less than ten miles from where my family saw me off 11 hours ago. Everything's going according to plan. I'm squished between a 747 window and a young Korean boy with stinky breath. My two word Korean vocabulary, consisting of Kim Chi and 2 words for yes (ye, ne), isn't cutting it! We just ate a delicious mean consisting of ground hamburger and steamed veggies. You mix chile paste and rice in. They also served seaweed soup, wine, coffee, fruit, and other spicy garnishes. Sounds boring, but it was great! I tried asking my neighbor what the various dishes were called in Korean. The best I got was "pickle" as I pointed to the side of spicy pickle slices. I was later told that they translate many things to "pickle". Humm?

Returning to Sacramento 11 hours ago, I arrived at the airport 2.5 hours early - my mother had recently been caught in a long line. Our Bella Brus lunch also went more quickly than we'd planned. As I exited the 1 man security line I caught sight of a cute girl sitting alone at a wine tasting store - score! Turns out she was a soil engineer from San Diego. After completing her masters degree and 2 years experience she had flown to Sacramento to take some big geological test. The older waitress there was the real talker. She was SOOO impressed that I'm a Boeger, apparently one of her favorites. Earlier that day she served, and complained to, the head of CA DMV. 5 comparative wine samples later I was a talker too.

Now to LAX, where I had another 3 hour layover. I considered visiting the USO - they're always great, but I'm glad I didn't. I arrived at gate 6 or 7, then hiked across this long tunnel that felt like the whole airport to get to gate 5. A ten minute Mc'y Ds stop, then exited the airport and walked past terminal 4, then 3, the international terminal. Talk about a zoo! The line to the metal detectors took an hour alone. Fast forward past the ID checker who'd never seen an "official passport", the creepy Asian guy that kept cutting in front of me (I was the creepy half-Asian that kept cutting back), the currency exchange, an hour and a half enjoying my Cingular Internet access, and an absurdly long runway wait.

I'm looking at our flight profile on my personal LCD screen, the application that will sell me movies or music, play video games, and display our realtime flight info. We're now over Vancouver. We will curve up over Alaska and that huge Asian peninsula that I should know from Risk.

Seoul, here we come! Time to get some sleep...