If you’re goin’, you’ll have to fly.

Well I’m back from an awesome trip visiting my friends Kraig and Stacey who live in San Diego, California. There so much that I want to blog about and so many pictures to show but I’m not quite ready yet. Instead, I’ll throw out the trip in more manageable chunks over the next few days.

Unlike some countries like, say, England, you can’t exactly ride your bike across the country. Well you could, but your trip would be horrendously long. Kraig and Stacey live way on the other end of the country—at least the contiguous part of it. My choices are a month’s long bike trip, a three day car trip, or a four hour flight. And for $350 (including those nasty taxes and fees), a flight seemed to be just the ticket.

In order to travel west, my travel plans had me going east to Detroit where I had a layover for a little while. It turns out that the idea of free wi-fi in international airports doesn’t apply to Detroit Metro. Bummed I rode the tram that travels up and down the concourse. Traveling a mile up and down an airport gets old oh.., about the first time you do it so I made my way to my gate and plopped next to a couple of fine looking guys that appeared to be military members. Considering that San Diego is home for a good chunk of the fleet, I’d say that the odds were pretty good that they were. In fact, one of them is the guy wearing the blue and white striped shirt in the picture.

One of the bonuses of this trip was that I got to cross something off the things-I-need-to-see-before-I-die lists. Well sorta—I did get to see the Grand Canyon. Okay, okay, so I still want to see it up close but I think I can skip the aerial tour now.

Stacey picked me up at the airport. If there is anyone who is afraid of flying, they should take a drive in San Diego. Trust me, flying is a cakewalk but more on that later.