POSTDATED- March 27th- This post was written in the San Francisco Airport but awaited publishing due to the lack of an internet connection. I apologize for the chronological mishap.

ARE YOU GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO?

First thing is first, I would like to applaud William Thomas Quinn for sacrificing a week in sun in Florida so that he could drive me to the airport and make this adventure possible.

“If I take one more step further, it will be the farthest I have ever been from the shire”

-Samwise Gamgee

For me, that step was taken halfway between a snooze and a half finished crossword puzzle on a six hour flight. Never, in my life, have I been this far from home.

So the journey begins…

The flight from Newark was uneventful though not uninteresting. In purchasing my plane ticket my school managed to find a seat for me in the middle of three seats. Though I am never one to balk at an opportunity to meet new people on my travels I will admit that this was not the ideal scenario for developing a rapport with complete strangers. The fellow to my right was of little note. He entered the scene with boundless promise as he sat down beside, fully equipped from a recently purchased meal from the airport Fridays, but retired to his collection of crossword puzzles that he clearly had been collecting for the whole week shortly after. The fellow on my left was a gentleman well into his middle ages who had the faint, though distinct, aroma of a fully functioning distillery. He gave me a little grief for attempting to place my luggage in the compartment directly overhead because he didn’t want me to crush any of his belongings. It was an unfortunate first encounter but he redeemed himself throughout the flight as his ipod music spilled beyond his headphones, allowing me to catch the faint sounds of Rihanna, Chris Brown, Beyonce Knowles and the like. I give him credit for being so with it in these modern days of ever-changing tastes in pop culture and hip-hop.

Upon arriving in San Francisco I was given the opportunity to eat lunch and drink a couple of pints in the morning hours without any fear of social reprisal for my actions. While the world of the west coast had only been awake for a few hours (it being 10:00am in their time) I was heading into New Jersey’s afternoon hours. However, a lunch of quesadillas and Sam Adams was quickly augmented by the arrival by a worldly soul who had clearly found himself at the bottom of a few pints himself before arriving at my own watering hole. Luckily, though there were a number of fine individuals patronizing the bar at the same time as myself, our world-traveling friend found me as his one and only kindred spirit among the masses. He mustered a number of half-finished stories about drinking while working at a pizzeria and his own exploits in foreign lands like Korea and the Philippines. I learned a number of things that I will not repeat here about these countries and while I still had some time for another drink or so I felt compelled to retreat here and let the world know about my exploits thus far.

So far, everything is right on track…