Thursday morning, I got up bright and early to drive Squelch to the airport, then off to middle Washington to see my friend Jim. Jim was one of my two best friends in high school; I went on to college, our friend Vinny went into business, and Jim joined the Army. I saw him perhaps twice after that, once when he was finished with Basic Training, and once when he was home on leave. So this would be the first time in... well, way too many years.

He's a changed man. CEO of an ISP, city councilman, father... We spent all day reminiscing and catching up, then off to dinner with his family and in-laws. I wasn't aware that Washington was such big wine country. A couple of glasses of Riesling at dinner (and one of the restaurant's excellent dark microbrews), a couple more glasses of other wines after dinner... whoo. Good thing I wasn't driving.

I set my PDA to wake me at 4 AM, as I had a long drive ahead of me... and apparently slept right through it; I awoke at 4:45. I got on the dark, twisty, turny mountain roads back towards Portland. On the way through, I stopped back at Hash HQ just to see if anyone was there, to say "howdy" on my way down to California. Martin, Steve and James were there; they convinced me to try getting a standby flight from Portland down to Sacramento, as they scoffed at Microsoft Streets & Trips' estimate of 8.5 hours. As the prices they were suggesting were about what I'd pay in gas, and I wouldn't have to do all that driving, I agreed.

The two airlines that had flights to Sacramento didn't do standbys, and they were all booked up that day anyway. Well, there went an hour and a half I could have been driving. C'est la vie, I guess.

Finally, I arrived at the apartment of the truly cool (and utterly adorable) sarahbellem, who showed me around Sacramento and took me to the Tower Café (if I remember correctly) for dinner.

In the morning, we met up with two of her fellow students and drove to San Francisco for shopping. I bought Karen some things. I also learned that the fast-food restaurant called Hardee's down here, is "Carl's Jr." in that area of the country. It's also "Roy Rogers" up in the Northeast — or at least, it used to be, at one time, judging from the burger wrappers I saw with both names printed on them years ago. Hooray, useless trivia!

Anyway, back to Sarah's apartment, where we watched some Black Adder II before it was time for me to leave again. I drove through the night, twelve hours to the minute from her apartment back to SeaTac Airport. I slept right through the first takeoff and the in-flight movie (something with Adam Sandler). As my now painfully stiff neck prohibited me from going back to sleep — those dinky airplane pillows are utterly useless — I fired up the laptop and watched the new Doctor Who the rest of the way home, where I was greeted by my lovely wife.

Here endeth the tale.