Making Up For Lost Time

Apologies for missing a few days of blog posts.  However, I now have the benefit of the webernets from a real laptop and keyboard that does not suck to type on.  So let the epic retelling of my Journey (yeah.  it's that important) from Owls Head to Seattle begin!

I woke up fairly early 6AM (?) and had an iced coffee and had french toast.  Please see the look on Kiwi's face and judge for yourself how good that french toast was.  Got to the airport around 9:30, did the goodbyes and got on the airplane.  Since it is a fairly ""small"" plane by most people's standards (10 seater with the pilot), this guy got to sit in the copilot's seat.  There isn't really a good picture to show this, but trust me -- it happened.

It was a decidedly picturesque takeoff.  They didn't want us to have our cellular devices out, but it we took most of RKD's runway 13.  Conveniently, this takes off directly over my house.  So I got a picture perfect flyover of my house at 500 feet (low for you non-airplane people) and then were where in a cloud bank and Maine was gone...

Taxiing around at Boston was pretty neat, got to see lots of 737NGs and A320s.  Getting off the plane, I had a short chat with our pilot.  Apparently he was soon jumping ship for Cathay Pacific to fly the 777, which seats 30 times more people!  Talk about a step up.

I had a 3 hour layover in Boston.  I stopped at one of the vendors to get a sandwich, but some chick in front of me mistook my order for hers and walked off with my sandwich.  Turned out quite well though, as the vendor gave me her sandwich AND remade mine! #winning  I sat down in the terminal and shortly thereafter a guy sat down, noticed my backpack with it's RPI logo and asked me if I went there.  Turned out he was a Goodrich HR VP and an RPI alumni.  Asked me if I had a job, we chatted about Boeing and then he gave me his card and told me to give him a call if I wanted a change in pace in a few years.

My flight to Charlotte was fairly uneventful.  I read a couple of airport books en route.  One was about startups and business, it was a bunch of case studies of the most successful American businesses in the last 10 years and not that great.  I also read an adventure book by Clive Cussler... and it was pretty lame.  It kept my interest while reading it, but basically every plot line came straight out of an Indian Jones movie... and honestly I would've enjoyed watching Indy more.

I had another layover in Charlotte and switched planes for Seattle.  A typical flight, below is a picture of Ranier descending into Seattle.  Unfortunately United had sent my luggage to San Francisco (wrong left coast S!)

I booked a hotel room at the La Quinta for the night, ready to get up the next day and head up to Mill Creek.  I went to Denny's that nice... it was a poor choice.  It did actually taste pretty good though.  My waiter was a huge African-American guy who said "copacetic" more than Davy Dougan and "BAM!" more than Emeril.

The next morning I went to pick up my rental car... but I could not find my license.  &#%$!  After tearing my luggage apart and calling every lost and found I had made my way through (apparently airports think it is a good idea to have like 5 lost and found's apiece), no luck.  I was pretty sure I must have somehow left it in Boston when I had to switch terminals and go through security again.  Ah well.  I took a cab ($100...) up to Mill Creek and my decidedly empty apartment.  While contemplating how the heck I was going to make due until my car showed up, it turned out that it was actually in my backpack.  It had worked its way into the bottom of my pack between layers in the fabric through a small tear.  My friend Ryan offered to give me a ride back to SeaTac where I finally picked up my rental car.  The rental people even remembered me!