Saturday, March 24
Half the Fun

No one ever said that taking a vacation was easy. The phone rang in our Terminal 3 Sheraton Hotel room at 4:30 am for the wakeup call. I don't care when my flight takes off, there's no justifiable reason for waking up that early. The worst part was doing the math and coming to the conclusion that we would be completing the landing process no less than twenty-two hours from now.

Despite my "difficulties" with US Immigration last year, I got through this time without incident. I suppose you have to be caught with a kilo of crack during the body cavity search before they start putting black-marks on your passport.

Toronto to Dallas I had the window seat. However, there was no movie on the three hour flight, so I read some articles on Jurassic Park 3, the Matrix sequels and caught two new Pokemon.

Arrived in Dallas - 5 minute walk to the connecting gate, 4 minute wait to board, 3 minute walk to the plane and settle in our seats and a 2 hour wait to fix a computer malfunction. A pilot with a good sense of humour made up for the inconvenience. You could hear the forced irony in his voice as he read his lines introducing the 777 as the "most technically advanced commercial airplane in the world".

Being the kind of person who is easily amused by items of high "coolness" factor, I was thoroughly impressed with the 6" LCD screens on the back of every seat and an assortment of movies and channels to watch - all of them sucking to various degrees with the following exceptions:
- a Japanese dialogue/English subtitled film "After Life"
- National Geographic channel - too bad Crocodile Hunter wasn't on.

Read Episode II spoilers (I know the whole plot now), caught five more Pokemon, earned a gym badge and slept for four hours.

Never sleep on a plane. There is no pain like waking up after four hours of tailbone numbing, lower-back wrenching torture and knowing that the only reason that it is "not that bad" is because you haven't completely woken up yet -- a protection that would soon be lifted.

Naturally, the Sun was still shining in any cracks around the closed blinds. Politically, we crossed the International Date Line and it was now Sunday.