Well here I am, sitting at Gate 120 for Cathay Pacific flight 883 to Hong Kong with a connection to Singapore. I’ve got a little less than an hour till I say good riddance to Uncle Sam’s hairy ass and say hello to my new asian world.

Bu that’s not totally true. I know I’ll miss it. I’ll miss Panda Express making me feel like was just had an alien baby implanted in my belly; I’ll miss the hours spent every day in the only true free parking in Los Angles that many seem to call Freeways. But most of all I’ll miss the people. Yeah sure, I’ll miss my friends, but there’s that lovely contention and egoism that only LA knows, that I think I’ll miss most. While I don’t know what the people of Singapore are like quite yet, I do have an inkling I won’t just be able to assume that girl at Starbucks with the blonde hair with her hand on her hip isn’t a downright bitch anymore. While the main reason will be that asians rarely have blonde hair, it’s partially because chances are a pretty girl in LA is an actor, and hates her job working at Chili’s .

Okay they’re calling me on the plane now so I’ll have to cut this short. See ya on the other side. Literally. The other side of the World.

Alaska just won’t let me go. It’s got the grip of a dead homeless man, frozen on the streets of Anchorage in December.

Around 3:00 PM Sunday I left Homer, riding with my dad on the 5 hour drive to Anchorage where he dropped me off. Noon the next day I was still at the airport ironically named for a senator who was still alive at the time of the naming, then died in a plane cars later. (Thanks for the correction,Shawn)

While I have said in the past that the Anchorage airport is one of my favorite airports I’ve had the pleasure of sleeping in, I am somewhat grateful that for once I didn’t have to.

US Airways Flight 217. “Cancelled for Maintenance.” To me, maintenance just sounds like more fun, but of course someone has to get all worried about safety and cancels the flight. With a scheduled departure at a lovely 1:45 AM, this left over 150 passengers stranded in the middle of the 25 degree fahrenheit night in Alaska. Because of my inherent laziness, I was one of the last people in line to complain to the gate counter. When they directed everyone to rebook at the main ticket counter, outside of security, I suddenly found myself at the front of a herd of upset travelers. Smoking past some old ladies I was sixth in a queue of 150 to fix this mess.

They gave us a number of booking representitives who I surprisingly got ahold of relatively quickly. After twenty minutes on the phone, however, they basically told me the next US Airways flight wasn’t until Wednedsday, and they couldn’t book anything with the other airlines because they were sleeping. Thus I waited. Two hours later, I had a new booking on Alaska Airlines at 12:35 PM, and a free hotel room at Quality Inn. I don’t even want to know how long it took the rest of the 144 or more people to get rebooked. I was sleeping in a bed with oddly square pillows and dreaming of the mediocre continental breakfast in the morning.

The rest went fairly smoothly. I went through security again, hopped on the Alaska Airlines flight, and now I’m in Seattle, waiting for my 6:55 on United to the city of angels. And traffic. Mostly traffic. Maybe one angel smoking crack with a bum under the sixth street bridge. But on the bright side at least his sweaty grasp is a little easier to escape from.

Update – 8:15 pm: I spoke too soon. My US Airways/United flight operated by Skywest (who is actually flying this thing I don’t know) was delayed by two hours then cancelled. I ran to the United customer service desk, spent 40 minutes at the desk while this cute little bald man pecked away at a keyboard. Rebooked once more, I’m again flying on Alaska Air to LAX arriving at 9:45. Good news is I convinced him to give me a food voucher.

Update – 8:30 pm: Alaska Air’s flight apparently is landing late. Delayed 25 minutes. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee

Update – 3:00 am, wednesday: After United losing my bag in Seattle, it has finally been delivered.

Total time for everything to get from Point A to Point B: 60 Hours. 

I’m a little behind on this one, but a week ago, a large part of Homer participated in an annual Burning Basket celebration on the Spit. Since 2004, Homer’s residents have spent six days constructing a giant ten foot basket out of natural materials and plants.

People can write sentiments or personal notes and place them inside, or weave them into the outside structure. On the seventh day, the basket is given to the community, is set ablaze, and the thoughts and wishes of this quint town are released into the atmosphere.

Being that I had nothing else to do, the motivating factor for most of my outings,  I went. There was a drum circle, fire dancers, hot air balloon lanterns, and of course, a leather clad man with a feather poking out of his rainbow hat. You can’t get much better than that unless there was a dancing midget in a polar bear outfit. Burning Basket people, get on this.

I have to admit, it was a bit more entertaining than I expected (and quite nice having a massive fire on a cold and windy evening). However, as usual in this town, the event was mainly populated with a much older demographic, paired with the accompanying young kids. With my brothers, myself and maybe two other people aged 16-30, we were definitely a minority. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,  of course I wouldn’t complain if there were a couple more hot babes my age that just happen to need a buff, burly man to keep them warm.

Here are several photos I took from the burning.

For more info check out the Burning Basket Project facebook page.