While visiting Tucson, AZ over our Christmas break Cassie and I took a trip down to Mexico, along the way we stopped at the very lovely Tumacacori Mission south of Tucson. If your ever in the area I highly recommend visiting this site. It’s an historic Spanish Mission preserved in its present form.
While I have flown over the pacific northwest many of times this last flight was by far the most beautiful I have ever seen. We left San Francisco right before a stunning sunset that ever so thinly streaked across the night sky in a perfect horizontal line with a slight burst of light in the middle. The dark blue clouds provided the perfect contrast to the setting suns pink rays.
Once we arrived above our destination, the city was already glowing with street lights. I’ve always seen this as a glowing rash taking over the natural world but tonight it looked different, tonight It was lovely. Every light we passed looked like it was twinkling just for us. We flew north past Seattle’s skyscrapers and circled around the famous space needle back south to the airport. With a bit of searching we found our tiny little part of the world nestled between construction and busy roads. Continuing past downtown again we now had a view of all the cargo ships making their way through the Puget Sound making me realize once again how lovely this rainy city really is.
After a week of non-stop sunshine in Tucson, Cassie and I ventured back to the rain and cloud filled days of Seattle. Along the way we had a short layover in San Fran, usually this is just a small diversion that we are used to enduring to save a few bucks on flights. But this New Years eve the stars aligned in our favor. While waiting for our next flight we heard the announcement of an over booked flight. With one quick glance at each other I was in line to secure our vouchers and give up our seats. We were both given $400 worth of United Airline vouchers, not to shabby I must say.
After settling into our hotel and devouring our free dinner we headed out to the Mission District to celebrate the New Year with strangers. We settled on a bar called The Casanova. The crowd was eclectic and ready to party. We danced and drank PBR until the count down started. Afterwards we sipped a little champagne while some guy spent the next 10 minutes telling us about ourselves and our fortunes. Pretty funny and strangely accurate.
The next day we ventured back to SFO to catch our flight with our new found airport family. We meet this older couple the night before when we both gave up our seats and the next day they were so sweet making sure we went through security with them and waiting for us to walk to the terminal together as well. We even sat with them for a while and chatted about where we would be going with our free tickets. Then once again over the intercom came another announcement of an overbooked flight. Without hesitation I was back in line giving up our seats. Could we honestly walk away with $1,600 worth of flights before we left San Fran? Sure enough we did.
So with a little patience and lots of horrible airport food consumed we can now fly to Seoul without paying a dime. Thanks United for funding our trip!
I’m excited to see that my good friend Marat and his wife Katya have started there blog as they adventure across South East Asia and Inda. I have a good hunch this will be a blog you will want to follow. Katya is a journalist and I’m sure she will have some great insights and thoughts about the world. You can follow there tumblr blog titled In Medias Res.
My legs are weak
my arms strong
been in the canoe a little long
gonna need a beer to carry on.
