Taipei!

[Saturday July 21st, 6:35am local time]
Hello all and Happy Saturday! (Where did Friday go!?) I just made it into Taipei Taiwan and its about 6:10am. Just as a heads up, Saturday is looking good so far. Well my longest leg of my journey to Penang is over, now one more flight and I'm there.
Recap:
On Thursday July 19th 2007 I was picked up for our house via a limo service and driven to Milwaukee. Funny thing, on the way there it sounds like the car had a squeek, squeek, squeek. I Finally commented that it sounds like there was a bird up there! Turns out there was! Her daughter needed her to babysit the bird so along for the ride it came. All three of use (bird included) got held up in gridlock before the 894 splitoff in Milwaukee. I was getting nervous. All is well though as we did make it to the airport wih plenty of time to spare. I had a chance to talk, or rather hear at great depth, from a new Midwest pilot all their training procedures and how to become a pilot. Quiet crazy, 3000 hours then you can apply. They have 1000s of applicants peared down to a class of about 30. After several months of course work, quite vigorous actually, only 4 in his class made it! Makes one feel a lot safer knowing all that the pilots have to go through, and knowing they've got to really enjoy it to keep going through the hassle of random testing where your job is on the line each time!

My first leg was a Midwest flight from Milwaukee to LA. Before it I had to get an UNO pizza as I don't know when the next time I would get pizza (that and I hadn't eaten all day! So much for waiting to the last minute to pack for a 3 month trip!) My flight was delayed a couple of times which made me nervous (Nervous start that day!) . Eventually we boarded and I got a Window seat but it was dark most of the flight since we left at 8pm. While over Utah (I think it was Utah?) we saw a large wild fire burning in the night. Sad to say, but it was an amazing site. I wish I had gotten a picture! I meet Cleveland, a car salesman from LA as well as a lady who worked for GE. We had some interesting discussions, she kept refering to Alaska as a country... Eventually we all began reading but Cleveland didn't have a book so I loaned him my copy of 'Slaughterhouse Five'. 'Interesting' was his choice of words for the book...

I Eventually made it to LA. I ventured to the International terminal, found the China Airlines counter and got all checked in. Supposidly my luggage is ticketed through to my Penang destination, we'll see about that! The LA lounge ws closed so I got a voucher and found a chili cheese dog, had to savoir some more fattening American food. I got a chance to talk with Anna for a while, it was great to hear her voice. I miss her so much already! Its going to be hard to be away for so long :(

We boarded and I got to sit in the upper deck of the 747! That was pretty kewl. We had our own individual fold out screens for movies, big chair that reclined quite a bit, extra storage bins. We were served 2 meals an a snack over the ~15 hours, pretty western in general, steak with raw salmon and veal. Eggs benedict with some green stuff. Strangest I think was mixed nuts, some were wrapped in seaweed, strange but good. The flight was pretty uneventful. I watched some movies, lets see, '300', 'The Last Mimzy', and 'Blades of Glory'. They were all good.

Well now I'm in the VIP lounge, time to get some refreshments and such before my next flight! It's going to be a long day!

I miss you all!

-Terry