Half-Way Home

Well, I've been home for a little over two weeks now...half way until I get back out on the road.
Although I enjoy being home...I am looking forward to getting back out on the road.

I've finally had a chance to go through all of the pictures that I've taken during the last tour and have picked out some highlights - now I just have to get them on to a CD...and maybe add some music or something.

Even though I am enjoying lazing around and sleeping in...I am looking forward to getting back to work and going to new places.

It has been wonderful getting together with friends while I am home and hope that I spend some time visiting with everyone before I have to leave.

Jetting Back Home

Although the term "jetting" usually means going somewhere fast...the act of travelling by jet can be anything but. Oh sure, once you get on the plane and get you clearance for take-off the travel between airports IS very fast. However, getting to that point where you DO get on the plane can sometime take a looooooong while. Normally, I have been blessed with good airline karma...June 30th was an off day for me...not a "bad" day...just an "off" day. I say that because my repacked bags were not overweight and I didn't have a hard time going through security (those are the kind of things that would throw it into the "bad" day category). It was just that the weather situation over much of the eastern part of the nation caused many delays which threw everything out of whack (BTW...just what would being "in whack" be like? IT would have to be the opposite of "out of whack"...but it just doesn't sound that good.). So my flight which was scheduled to leave L.A. at 2:36PM ended up leaving around 4PM. I was connecting through Chicago and my flight home to Cleveland was to leave at 9:30PM...well I landed in Chicago at 10:05PM. Again..."bad" karma would have been that I would have missed my connecting flight or that it was cancelled and I would have had to spend the night in the terminal or at a hotel in Chicago..."off" karma just meant that that flight was delayed as well. The flight that was to leave at 9:30PM ended up taking off at 12:15AM...but we were just glad to actually be making our way home.

I was intending to return to Cleveland on June 30th (11:48 PM to be precise)...instead we ended up touching down (hmmm..."ended up touching down"...I like that) at 2:36 AM on July 1st. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

I am glad to be home (at least for the month before the next tour starts!)

Fun and Repacking in L.A.

Spent this past Tuesday travelling from Oahu back to the mainland and then promptly ended up falling asleep when we got to the hotel in L.A..

The repack on Wednesday went rather well....took a little over four hours to complete...we had to take everything out of the air containers that we used to ship our stuff to Hawaii and back and then repack them into the crates that we normally use and then repack those crates into our two trucks like we would do on a normal load-out. We got there a bit before 8AM...our first truck got there around 8:45 and the first truck load of the air containers arrived right around 9AM. With a brief water break or two we had the truck doors closed before 1:30PM.

I guess that I was in the repacking mood (or mode) as I was able to reduce the luggage that I was carrying from three bags to two (not counting my 2 carry-ons of course) which thereby met the luggage requirement and I wouldn't have to pay for an extra piece of luggage...now would I have to pay because they weighed too much?

After that I ended up falling asleep. (Boy that jet lag can suck...)