Until Midnight (& Sometimes Later)

Took a brief break and all the cool kids were making these maps. Seems I’m missing a bunch of states right in a row.

Create Your Own Visited States Map

I’m hoping to fill in some of the missing ones in the next two years–we considering the Empire Builder from Chicago to Spokane next August for Sasquan, with a stop in Glacier National Park. And in 2016, they’ll be Mid-AmeriCon II in Kansas City.

My weekend in a nutshell starting Saturday morning: drive 2.5 hours to Washington-National/Reagon airport (DCA). Fly Air Tran to Milwaukee (MKE). Frantically try to locate friends. Find them. Eat dinner with them at restaurant with abysmally slow service, okay food, and excellent bloody marys. Sleep at LaQuinta. Get up and judge cat judge. Return to MKE. Fly back to DCA. Shuttle back to the Doubletree where the car is parked for the looong ride home.

Shuttle is almost full, and everyone else is (not surprisingly) staying at the Doubletree for the night. They are nearly all flight crew. Someone starts a discussion about the complimentary Doubletree cookies you get at check-in (all the crew seem at least somewhat acquainted with one another).

“Can I have your cookie if you’re not going to eat it? I’ll have it for breakfast.”

“It’ll be hard as a rock in the morning if you don’t put it in a plastic bag.”

“You know: they reheat those, and reheat them, and reheat them . . .”

“Do you remember when the cookies used to be bigger? It must be the economy.”

“Do you remember the old days when we used to get two cookies? I remember that.”

I’m guessing none of these guys had been flying anywhere particularly interesting . . . .