Well day 1, as you can imagine, involved a lot of plane time, all on Southwest to Seattle (where I’ve never been) with a brief stopover in Kansas City (where I’ve also never been). I’ll tell the rest with pictures.

Started off at Midway airport in Chicago. I don’t know why, but I’ve always loved airports. It’s really stressful getting your baggage checked in and whatnot, but once you get to your gate and you have time to kill it’s fun. You can ride the tram or the moving walkway (make sure to stand in the “walk only” lane) or make a new friend then quickly lose them. Airports are their own little countries.

Ah the neverending patchwork blandness that is Missouri.

Okay, that’s a little better. (click on the images to enlarge to their full bland potential)

And there’s the Kansas City airport. As I said before, I’ve never been to Kansas City, but assuming that the airport is a fantastic litmus test, then I’m not impressed (for any Kansas City folks reading this, I am just kidding. I’m sure KC is “Really Something”).

This was the color combination of the plane I flew to KC and Seattle on. I have no design or fashion sense whatsoever, and even I know that tan, red, and orange were never meant to be combined.

(click the images to enlarge)

I’ve never seen the Rocky Mountains before (at least I don’t think I have). So I went a little “mountain crazy” with my camera while flying. Those are some of the better ones. Every fifteen minutes I looked up the mountains were getting bigger and bigger. I like that last one because you can see both the clouds, and the shadow they’re casting. But then we got to the real Rocky Mountains.

(again, click to enlarge)

I believe I was listening to Recycled Air by The Postal Service right when I took that last picture. Then when we started our descent to Seattle, I noticed that I couldn’t see a city but just lots and lots of clouds. I figured that must be where Seattle is.

That was my shot of the “Seattle Rain”. I don’t know why I put quotes around that.

It’s always weird to me how when you fly over something, it looks fake. It just looks like a model that I could pick up and move wherever I want. Here’s Seattle from Above, and maybe you can see what I mean.

(if you see the little link hand appear over the image, you can probably enlarge it. Just so you know. I’m going to stop warning you now.)

Now here’s Seattle from the ground.

A much more opposing force from down here. So I arrived in Seattle having read about 400 pages worth of reading, found my baggage (even though I always get nervous, because it’s only a matter of time before your the one who gets their baggage lost), and headed off with my good friends who I hadn’t seen in way too long.

There they are. Aren’t they attractive friends? I agree.

Apart from a brief stoppage at the border because my best friend Ryan looks like a terrorist (oh and his work visa was expiring) we made it up to beautiful (I had to assume since it was dark when we got there) Vancouver.

And that’s about it, with one more observation from Day 1. For some reason, the city where we stopped for dinner in northern Washington is obsessed with Teriyaki. Every restaurant of even slight asian descent was called something teriyaki. If a restaurant just said “Chinese” it was no good, it needed to say “Chinese – Teriyaki” so that people could trust that Teriyaki could get got. Anyone? (and by anyone I mean Kevin Hop or Caroline Kooy if you’re checking this. And by the way, we drove past both of your home towns. For those of you who don’t know them, those are my two Northern Washington friends.)

Day 2 is next, since it generally comes after Day 1.