(2005-11-25 8:14am EST)
And so our voyage begins… I say voyage because it’s really too long of a flight to be called just a trip. I think in total it is going to take us some 14 hours of flight time to get there, if the anticipation doesn’t kill us first.

This morning my mom woke me up at 4:30 before she left to fight off hordes of Black Friday bargin shoppers. She made out well and luckily for us, got back to the house at 6 am, only to find us still asleep. She sirened, “You’re going to miss your flight!” And with that me and Jen, who was asleep on the living room couch, lunged out out of bed and hit the floor running. I don’t really know what happened next, but my next memory was realizing I had clean boxers on and no recolection of putting them on.

Without much delay, we were in the car and my father drove us to the air port. Traffic was heavier than we expected but not bad at all. We made it to the terminal, said good bye, and skipped off away from the car as we were now officially on our trip.

Check in was a breeze, but when it came to the security check, I was lucky enough to get selected. They scanned me with a magic wand and swipped my feet for explosives. The whole thing was realitively painless and only took a few minutes, so I didn’t mind. I mean, I’m going to Hawaii, how could I be anything but excited?

Once on the plane I was kind of stoked to see that there were televisions as I assumed that meant that there would be a movie. When I inquired with a flight attendant however, it was as if I had made a really funny joke. She informed me that these weren’t even hooked up and walked away thoughly amused. So no TV, but atleast I made someone laugh.

Now its time for a nap on this 3 hour flight to St. Paul to make up for last night.

(11/15 – 3:31pm)
Well after a few of the most stressfull days of the semester, I’m finally at the airport and ready for my most streneous and much needed vacation.

This semester has been full of BS and red tape so I’m really looking forward to getting away. As example of the types of things I’ve had to deal with I’ll describe todays frusteration. I have a history report due this Friday. I did poorly on the first exam which counts for 15% of our grade and where this report counts for 25% I figured I could make up some of the points on this. I spent a good deal of time running all over to three livraries just to find the resources I needed not to mention the hours I spent writing the paper. I then went through five revisions after having a classmate, my mother, and two of my senior english major friends review the paper in addition to my own rigerous review. So I put all of this work in to try and write a really good paper, only to have my teacher tell me that he is going to have to make it late (even though its THREE days EARLY!) because I’m not passing it in in-class. I told him that I could have a classmate pass it in if that was a problem but he turned down this idea because it has to be done in-person (even though he doesn’t take attendance). Honestly I don’t know what this guy has against me but he’s so rediculous that it seems like it has to be personal.

So on that note, I’m more than glad to be getting away for a few days (even if it is with my history notes in hand so I can study). I’m currently at Manchester Airport in NH wating for my flight to board and I’ll be on my way to NC, with a pit stop in Philly.

Once in NC, my good friend Chet, will be picking me up and we’ll be off on our hiking trip. Continuing with our life long goal, we’re going to be knocking out a few more mountains as we try to hike the tallest in each state. We’re starting out with the most southern states (GA, SC, and NC) and then working our way north until its 12 hours before I have class on Monday, which is when we’ll drop everything and start hightailing it home.

I’m stoked! Wish us luck and check back for more updates!