Back in Amer­ica
25 February — ????

Well, I finally got on an Alaskan Air­line flight at 9 p.m., and got into Seat­tle a lit­tle after 1 p.m. I man­aged to sleep the entire flight from Los Ange­les to Seat­tle — I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. My bag wasn’t checked, so all I had to do was get a taxi, and I was home free.. Except for San­jay, who’s couch I was going to sleep on, wasn’t answer­ing his phone. It was 2 a.m., I’d been awake for most of the last 24 hours, and had slept maybe 8 hours in the last 48. It was a rough, rough time. Luck­ily (and some­thing I planned for), Erin lived close to San­jay, so I loaded my bags up and walked the block or two to her (my) house. Luck­ily, for me any­way, she was home. I got to sleep a cou­ple of very short hours on her couch, and it was heaven. Thanks Erin, if you’re read­ing. Or even if you’re not.

Even­tu­ally I ended up in my friends (Louis) base­ment, where I have a bed, and a dif­fer­ent change of clothes, and some sem­blance of my life again. Going from BMOC to liv­ing in a base­ment is kind of a rough tran­si­tion. At least I can use my “I’ve trav­eled South Amer­ica” sto­ries to imply my supe­ri­or­ity over other, non trav­eled peo­ple. It’s another unique Amer­i­can trait.