Well, I’ve been “traveling” for 18 hours now. I’ve only moved for about 7 of those hours, but still…

I’m currently sitting in the airport in lovely Newark, NJ. I’m guessing it’s lovely, because I haven’t really seen anything other than the inside of the airport and they have flat escalators just like at the Minneapolis airport. But I’m jumping ahead in more than just time zones here.

I started my day after sleeping about three or four hours at 6:30. Well, 7:00. I cooked up some name brand hot cereal and gathered everything up that I will need for my month abroad. Probably more than I need. After my nutritious breakfast, I walked down and caught the 5 express downtown without even waiting around! I got the 194 at westlake (and I saw the light rail again, I want to take that on the way back, if possible). I had to check in at the counter instead of electronically because I had to get three boarding passes. Sheesh. I waved goodbye to my backpack and proceeded to wait for my flight to San Diego.

On the flight, I read one year of the snakepit zine collections I brought with me. I also played the video game I downloaded for all my wait time. I think my phone now owns me. The highlight of my first flight was my starting a conversation with the guy next to me. He was going to San Diego with family to go to the big parks there. I suggested he go to the beach and Balboa Park as well. I didn’t tell him how much I thought San Diego sucked. He was from Ocean Shores. I mentioned I was thinking about retiring there. He thought that was a good idea. We deplaned and I headed to terminal 2, calling my brother to check in, and he headed off to his adventure. Good luck, dude.

My plane to Newark was ridiculously empty. I had a whole row to myself. Six seats! My goal was to get used to London time early while I traveled, so I tried to sleep on this flight as much as possible. It was pretty easy, since I could lay across all the seats. I watched a little of the desert in the southwest and then drifed off to a marginally comfortable slumber.

I arrived in Newark at 11:45, or 8:45 for you guys. 4:45AM for where I am going. My goal was to get more sleep in the airport while I waited for my 9:00 AM flight. The seats here all have armrests. This makes sleeping in them problematic. However, I scooted two rows together and slept across the two seats. That worked pretty well and I grabbed another hour or so. It’s now about 9:45 AM London time, so I just ate breakfast and am going to try to stay awake until I arrive. Apparently the plan was to meet a friend of a friend and go prowl the clubs, but I might have to skip that in favor of regaining some modicum of a functioning brain.

I’ve been twittering away during my travel so far, but that might have to calm down when I get to Europe. I only have 50MB of roaming data pre-paid for and I’ll need that for maps and hostels. I have uploaded some phone pictures to my Flickr, if you are interested. I have a couple short videos and a few fancy pictures taken, but they won’t go anywhere online for a while.

So far, my travels have been about being tired and minor discomfort. But I can look past that when I consider that this whole plane trip is basically free. In about 12 hours I’ll be in London, riding a train or two to get to my hostel. I’m looking forward to foreign lands. I’m a little apprehensive and every once in a while I think I should not be doing this alone, but I’m going to tell that part of me to shut up for a while and quit being such a baby. The sun is just rising and it’s time to explore!