June 5th, 2001

Somewhere between Cedar Rapids and Dallas, Texas
Okay... not sure what in the hell to think about things this morning... I'm currently hoping these aren't some sort of weird ass sign of things to come.
Finally heard from Alie. She's gotten a plane ticket booked to Hawaii... but has yet to get one into California. Now she's talking about going to LAX. I really don't want to have to kill the nice girl, but...
Thankfully I'll have net access, so HOPEFULLY she'll like actually give me some warning as to when and where she'll be flying in. San Fran and LA are each like 2-3 hours away from Fresno. I'd feel mighty stupid milling around an airport at 5 in the morning like a dumbshit and not have her show up, or some other strangeness.
Weather coming down to Cedar Rapids was horrible... it was like an Iowan typhoon. Visibility was cut to only a few feet in the car I was riding in with Chad and Brienne. To top it off, we got to the airport on time, to discover my flight to Chicago had been cancelled due to the weather. I guess Iowa wasn't the only state getting punished.

You know, I'm beginning to wonder if someone in Iowa has pissed off the Weather Gods. Whoever you were... APOLOGIZE DAMMIT! I want it to be summertime by the time I get back. I also want them to finish those waterslides out by Hawkeye Community College too. Been a while since I've gotten to play on anything like that. :)

At any rate, the nice lady at the ticket counter was able to re-route me through Dallas/Ft. Worth... and from there to Los Angeles and then to Fresno. Amazingly, even though the flight I left on was 2 hours after my original, I'm only going to be 40 minutes late to my final destination.
That is, of course, if everything goes to plan. I recall going through this airporty before, on American Airlines, no less. They changed my gate a half dozen times then loaded the plane and left without me. That was fun, lemme tell you.
I've been seated next to a nice gentleman from Muscatine Iowa, named Bob. Turns out he went to school out in California and gave me all sorts of cool ideas as to where to go on the upcoming roadtrip leg of my tour. He's on his way to Peru for the engineering firm he works for.
He suggested Sequoia and Yosemite parks, I mentioned I was thinking of taking Route 66, this being the year of its anniversary and all(according to Becky), and it turns out that it runs smack into the painted desert and the Grand Canyon... among other interesting sites.
I'm going to get my Internet Access for when I'm on the road setup today or tommorrow... at that point I'll begin doing updates as time and circumstances permit.

Enroute to Los Angeles:
Well, the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport hasn't changed since my last adventure there. It seemed a bit more organized this time around. My little TrAAinStation car(their spelling, not mine) got stuck for a few minutes... for some reason it decided it wanted to keep opening and closing the doors..
The plane I got this time isn't the little puddlejumper like I flew from in from Cedar Rapids on. It also isn't the 757 that I would've been able to ride in had Chicago not been under siege from a mid-western hurricane earlier in the morning. It's called a Super-80. It is nice though... I have lots of leg room and nobody in the seat next to me.
The weather as I was leaving and from what it looks like according to the forecasts is behaving on this leg of the trip. Looking outside(past the lucky bastard that got the window seat.. grrr) I don't see the thick blanket of white clouds like I did when leaving Iowa.
I really have no idea what to expect once I hit California. It's been over a decade since I've been out there. What memories I have are faded and spotty, at best. I haven't seen my relatives out there in as nearly as long. I wonder how hard it'll be to reconnect.
One of the major reasons for my going out there, to visit my Grandfather, unexpectedly got struck from the list of things to do... he passed away a couple months ago, much to my dismay. That really got me worried, so I decided I wanted to see all my family again before I got too involved with work and school... all the years that have gone by I just wonder how many a lot of them have left.
I'm going swimming as soon as I get to my Aunt and Uncle's place though. First thing I'm gonna do, well, after changing clothes and everything.

I think I'll do some writing now.

Oooooh... I'm passing over some mountains now. I have to bother the guy in the seat next to me to get a shot out the window, but he doesn't seem to mind. He's not much for conversation either. He whips out a Dell laptop and starts working on some business stuff while I work on this and a story. For the most part though I leave him alone.

In LAX...
Two words. Holy crap. I've been through some large airports in my time, but holy shit this place is huge. And it's not just the airport. I swear we must've spent 30 minutes flying over JUST Los Angeles before we got to the airport. I mean, you hear people say LA is a big place, you see figures, pictures... but it really doesn't do justice to the sheer bigness of the place. It's not a built up sort of bigness either... like New York and Manhattan. It's like spread out and sprawling all over largesse. Miles upon miles of city. I guess California being succeptible to earthquakes maybe in part explains this emphasis on spreading out as opposed to building up. And the smog is no joke, either. A hazy blanket envelopes the city. It especially noticeable once you get down close to the ground and you see those mountains off in the distance, but they're barely discernable in the smog.
Getting around the terminal was easy enough though. I was thoroughly impressed, actually. I got off my flight coming in and they immediately shepherded me to their crop duster facility on the outskirts of the airport et all where their commuter type flights leave and arrive. This would be their American Eagle branch of the company. You get to it via a transport bus that makes regular stops between the main terminal and the AE place. I had Evil Knievel as my bus driver. I swear to god he must've cut off two planes and went hauling ass around one of those baggage transport cars AND one of those trucks with the stairs that they use to disembark planes before he got us to the mini-terminal.
Then there was this grumpy old bastard who gave the gate attendants a ration of crap about his flight not being at this gate. Getting old must suck(no offense Don). ;)

Enroute to Fresno
I got my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean in over 5 years. (I've been to Oregon since my last visit to California... that was the last time I saw it). I got a window seat(FINALLY) on this leg of the trip, so I've been able to get a few nice landscape shots. Once we took off from LAX the pilot took us out way over the Pacific Ocean and banked back in and started heading northward. Once he got past the coast we hit a rather impressive range of mountains. I give the people that settled this state some credit, those couldn't have been any sort of picnic to cross.
After about 15 minutes of mountains, we began flying over what looked like Iowa type landscape (when you can actually see it from the air). A patchwork quilt type grid of greens and browns. Save for the mountains in the distance I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I'm guessing what I'm seeing is the San Joaquin Valley. The fact I'm only 20 minutes out of Fresno makes it seem that much more likely.
Oh, we're banking now... must be getting close.

In Fresno
Guess what stupid thing I did before I left Cedar Falls?
Well, before that, let's cover the stuff I did before I realized I did a stupid thing. I disembarked on the plane in Fresno. And you know, it was actually warm. Dry warm. WOW! I've been waiting since APRIL to feel this kind of weather over in Iowa. It was really breezy too, which they tell me is somewhat unusual. As I write this, in fact, my bedroom window is open and I can hear the windchimes outside blowing fairly steadily in the wind.
I saw Aunt Sandy and Uncle Ed before I even got into the terminal, through these slats on the windows I saw them as I entered from the pavement. It was like 14 years vanished in the blink of an eye. I almost immediately felt right at home with them... there was no awkwardness or anything.
They took me out to eat almost immediately after I got off the plane and picked up my luggage. They chose a place called The Bulldog Brewing Co. If you ever happen through this section of the country I highly reccomend it. I had the babyback ribs and oh... it was so good. They also microbrew their own beer. I had some really potent dark stout of theirs and it was just wonderful. Actually, I had two pints and got to feeling pretty mellow.
I spent the whole dinnertime talking to Sandy and Ed about all sorts of different things. Catching them up on my life(to some degree), telling them about work, etc... it was really nice.
I think the high point of the evening was when, upon returning from the restroom after dinner, I found Sandy buying me a Bulldog Brewing Co. T-shirt with the words "BITE ME" emblazoned on the back. Talk about a must have... it's almost cooler than the "Make 7 - Up Yours" shirts I've seen.
The city of Fresno is actually quite interesting. It's about the size of Jacksonville, all told. This surprised me at first, until I realized that California is a huge state with an enormous population and that I'd grown use to living in a state where the largest city isn't even as big as the one I'm currently in. This said... from the air it reminds me of Iowa in parts, but once you get into the city it reminds me a lot of what I saw of Miami. Very strange city... but nice. I could get to like it very quickly...
Anyways... the dumb thing I did. I left my keys in Cedar Falls. Ya know, car, apartment oh... and that silly little luggage key THAT I LOCKED MY SAMSONITE HARD SUITCASE WITH.
Crap.
So, we end up calling my grandfather's ex-wife(my step-grandmother... if that's really a word) named Genevieve. She might as well be grandmother by blood though, she's really quite wonderful. Apparently Grandpa had a Samsonite luggage kit that had a key with it that might work with mine. So me and Sandy went over to see her and ended up visiting a while. She showed me her and Grandpa's house they lived in together... showed me some of his things as well. She gave me a couple items of his too... a fairly expensive pen he used and an old picture of all of us(Mom, Dad, Sandy, Ed, Me, Jennifer and our cousins David and Tina) from back when I was like 4 years old. We helped her move a few things around... she's 80 years old now and is starting to look somewhat frail. We visited for a while longer and came back to Sandy's house.
Thankfully, the key worked. Note for all you out there - Samsonite isn't too picky about the keys that lock their luggage. ;)
So I tried going swimming, but it appears as though the water is a wee bit nippy for me tonight. I think I'll have to try it again tommorrow. However, for tonight, I think I will sleep.

Goodnight.