Contact at Sea-Tac

It’s my second blog post for the day. I had to re-date this morning’s as being from yesterday to get Hugo to put them chronologically in the feed, so I apologize for the bad record-keeping.

I think I should feel jet-lagged, but the six hour flight from Boston barely felt like anything. The day still feels normal.

But it could be worse, and in fact, it soon will. In about three hours, our plane is going to start boarding & I’m going to be strapped to a chair on a fancy winged bus for fourteen hours, which I’m sure won’t be the greatest experience of my coming week.

I’m finally in Seattle, now, though, which means that I can’t say I’ve never been out west before — although aside from the view of the tram that I caught leaving by on some tracks parallel to the international departures terminal and a higher proportion of evergreens to other deciduous flora, it looks pretty much the same as the east.

I’m not sure what gate my flight is leaving from, since the flights to Taipei weren’t shown on the departures board & the ticket doesn’t have that information (just says to look at the departures board). I’ll be able to learn soon enough, because I think the board’s going to update & worst-case scenario, the international departures gate here isn’t very large and I could just scan it over with my feet and eyes. It seems right now like I’m at the right gate, but at the moment it’s got a flight leaving to Seoul (a really cool place that I’ve love to go, I hear, but I don’t know any Korean and I didn’t buy that ticket. Someday).

I got some neat pictures while I was in the sky flying across the US — these are over North Dakota, Washington, and some random part of Seattle — the last one isn’t particularly beautiful as much as it looks strikingly like SimCity 3000.

This one is the one that people talk about when they mention that 1-square-mile land plots rule that came around sometime about two centuries ago, but that us in New England never quite caught on to.

I never realized what people were talking about when they discuss the vast expanse of the Rocky Mountains. If they’re epic enough to be as clearly visible from an airplane as they were for me, I guess they live up to the hype. And they’re beautiful to boot.

This isn’t the proper part of Seattle, but seems like quintessential suburban America. Much better-looking from the top-down than from ground level, I think. I’d like to find the part of Seattle with all the good public transit and the Space Needle. Someday, I’ll come back.

I’ll have another post like this tomorrow when I land for the final time, but I’ll be busy on the airport (I’ve never been on an international flight before and have no clue what this entails), so I’ll wait until I get to my hotel room to write that up.

I’m as excited as ever. Just highly caffeinated and impatient as I stare at the gate looking to see if this is the right one. I’m probably going to make an exercise trip back to the departures board after I’m done here anyway.

The world is neat. This is a new experience for me.

Thanks for checking in again, multiple times a day. It keeps me occupied!

I’ll be writing more again soon.