Californiacation, pt 1

I’m sitting in my Las Vegas hotel room on a really comfy chair. Seriously, it is so comfortable!

But enough about my current exciting life events – let’s talk about yesterday!

It was mostly an airport day – which is totally ok with me.

After stuffing full what I thought was a giant carry-on bag, I met up with my friend Nicole, who had an actual giant carry-on bag, and we were off to the airport. We got through security without a snag (yay!) , which was an exciting event for me because I’ve always had a snag while going through security. (Last time it was: “your shirt is too sparkly”. I kid you not.) And then, we waited. and waited. and waited. Yes, ok, in our excitement, we went a little overboard with the whole get-there-early thing. But it was nice to have some time to sit and think about the great journey that was about to happen for us. We snagged seats in front of a giant window overlooking the tarmac and watched the planes and the people. I saw all these big guys rushing around – driving weirdly shaped machines, and I wondered what it must be like to always be helping people go someplace else. Also, I wondered how cool it must be to help guide in all of those airplanes – or maybe it was only impressive the first time they did it.

So I sat there, and thought about airport workers, and snapped this great photo of my little pile of belongings:

After about two hours, we finally got on our plane and began our four hour ride to Phoenix. While Nicole was asleep almost instantly, and stayed that way, I spent most of the journey staring out of the window I was sitting next to, and occasionally staring (in a kind of hateful way) at the backs of the heads that were not staring out of their windows. What’s the point of taking a plane somewhere if you don’t look out the window? What do you think you’re traveling on, a bus? Seriously people, we are flying through the air – don’t you get that?

These are the things I think after every airplane ride I take. I’ve been on quite a few now, and after every one I feel just greatly impressed about the whole thing. And I mean the whole airplane-traveling experience: driving to the airport, going through security, people watching, waiting to board, finding your seats, jamming your luggage wherever it is meant to go, ignoring (or watching) the flight attendants as they go through their little spiel, taking off, flying, landing. That basically included the whole airplane-traveling experience, right? The airports themselves are fascinating to me: people of all sorts from all over jumbled together, all trying to get somewhere else. I love it. I could live in an airport. Oh – and also, pilots. I have a strange fascination with pilots. I could go on and on about them, so I’ll just leave it at: “They are the coolest human beings on this planet” and tell you about the rest of my journey that ended at this comfortable armchair!

Once we got to PHX, we had an hour layover there, which wasn’t so bad. Then we got on our last flight for the day – to Las Vegas! I think Vegas flights always contain the most interesting people…

What then occured was what must have been the shortest flight in human history.

“41 minutes from runway to runway.” – The Pilot

He claimed it was 41 minutes, but it felt like 15. And soon, we found ourselves in the heart of Las Vegas – confused about the time, a little sleepy, a lot excited, and hungry! I ordered pizza (on my phone – online! I think I had a senior moment: “Wait, I can order pizza – on this app – without talking to anyone?!”), and we wandered around a bit (read: across the street from our hotel, but it was a 6-lane street…) to find drinks.

I’d like to say our first day of adventuring went out with a bang – but really we just scarfed our food and then each fell into a deep, coma-like sleep.

And that brings us back to now, with me, in this chair (did I mention it was comfortable??), and this beautiful view: