Nobrainer’s Think Tank

As I begin to write this, it is 1AM Eastern and 10PM Pacific.

The trip began Tuesday around 6PM. Rachel and I departed Charlottesville. After a handful of stops to top off the tanks, we cruised into Wha’s house in Huntersville around 10:15. After a couple beers and some catching-up time, I took a shower and hit the sack.

Fast-forward about 5 hours to 4:30AM Wednesday – time to wake up. After a lone use of the snooze alarm, we were mostly awake. By 5 we were out of the house and on the road to Charlotte-Douglas Airport. In no time we parked in a purple-lit garage, checked in with Delta, and passed through security without incident (although in line I learned that I was supposed to have all my little bottles collected in a single, transparent zip-loc bag; after the line I learned that those single bags must not be all that important.).

At that time, it was way before 6 and we had an hour to kill. Coffee sounded like a good idea and predictably there was a Starbucks just around the corner while a 2nd was further down the concourse. Predictably, they also failed to produce a good cup of coffee, providing instead something that could best be described as ‘burned.”

We made it to Cincinnati/Northern-Kentucky airport a little early. Despite it being 8:30AM, Goldstar Chili was open and I had to have a cheese Coney (that’s a hot dog with mustard, onions, chili and shredded cheddar). Rachel and I also had to have some Chic-Fil-A chicken biscuits since the goodness of Chic-Fil-A doesn’t exist on the West Coast.

By 9:10, we were well fed and buckled into our 737 en route to Portland. Just over 4 hours later we landed it was about 10:30.

The rest of the day included a huge, late lunch at Jakes, some napping, multiple cups of coffee, some Fat Tire, and pulled pork barbecue sandwiches.

In all, it was a pretty good day. There were no crying babies on the plane, no delays, and even the Starbucks really isn’t worth complaining about (I just had to throw it out there for Evan and Bear).

So far I haven’t been able to make many observations about my new surroundings. The light rail transit all over the place is certainly different. And the vegetation is mostly new to me.

I also managed to gain internet access at one point, which was about the first time in 24 hours. That, more than anything will remind you just how much junk and crap email I get, as well as how many blog posts and comments I am actually exposed to in any given day. (I think I need to cut back a bit).

That’s about all. I’ll report more when I can.