Good morning America!

Greetings from Shopping Mall, USA-deep south version.

Long day yesterday. Because this trip is on my dime, I had opted to save money. I would have saved even more money on the tickets had not the S.O. been such a bitch so insistent that we travel together. Had we done it my way I could have bought and upgradeable ticket to the east coast and turned in some miles to get her here with less pain. She might have had to travel after me is all, which might have meant I could actually have some fun for a couple of days. Because she insisted we travel together, it cost me more than I wanted-but not as much as it could have.

We flew on Singapore Airlines from Narita to LAX. Which is the way to go if you have to be back in the cattle car. On the plus side the service was good-they did not forget about you after the meal service and they did not snarl at you if you wanted some 12 ounce sleeping pills during the course of the flight. On the down side-our seats were in the middle of the screaming baby / Sri Lankan refugee section. Aside from the fact that I do not generally sleep well on airplanes unless I’m farther forward, it was not too bad. And the tickets-purchased on line from the Singapore Air web site were a bargain, all things considered.

Of course, once you get to LAX, you begin to experience the drudgery that is travel at any airport in the USA these days. It all comes swimming back at you as soon as you clear customs-the rudeness, the surly airline personnel, and the losers bracket known as the TSA security screening line. Since I have a lap top, and shoes and a jacket, the assembly line disassembly of all my packed briefcase / back pack takes a couple of minutes.

We find our connecting flight to Denver. No issues, and get on and immediately fall asleep. Upon arrival in Denver though, we have about 25 minutes when we get there to race the length of the airport to get to our final leg to Shopping Mall USA. The plane from LAX had arrived early, but we sat on the ramp for 30 minutes waiting to get to the gate. By the time we got off at gate B-12 to discover we had to get to gate B-95 we were definitely time constrained. The S.O. was less than amused. That did not stop her from making a quick pass through Starbucks though, where she could not decide if she wanted to buy a Denver city mug. She did not like my advice very much, ” Just pick one and let’s go!”. She did not buy one.

Thank goodness she’ll never have to answer the phone at 3 AM at the White House. She will still be trying to figure out what country to bomb.

Getting the rental car was itself both easy and not so easy. Getting the keys was painless-it should be for a Gold Card member-but it seems they forgot that they should put the car in the front rows. So I had to hike past construction to the suth 40 to  find the car.  That got us to the motel about midnight. Which meant we had had just shy of 20 hours getting there.

So after some deep sleep, woke up this morning with the phrase, “You’re making a big mistake………….” echoing in my subconcious thoughts.  S.O. is back asleep so I will go for a run and look around.

What the hell am I doing here? There’s got to be a bar in Wanchai that I could tend…………..At least I won’t have to watch NHK for a week.

The adventure continues………….