Sleep Spent

I left San Francisco bright and early on Friday the 17th. I boarded an Amtrak bus to SLO (to pick up D. Gregg) and then on to Santa Barbara. Well, we didn’t make it to Santa Barbara in time because of ¨this¨:http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2006/03/18/news/local/news01.txt. So we took 154 around Goltea and into Santa Barbara, but so did hundreds of other cars. We were stuck in traffic for nearly three hours, and we missed our train in Santa Barbara. There was another one at 7, which we hopped on.

This put a wrench in our LA plans (train station pick up and dinner with some of Gregg’s friends), so we called them up, cancelled, and then called another of his friends and had her pick us up at a different train station. That went to plan, we went down the 405 and ended up at LAX right when we needed to and boarded our 7 hour flight to Panama.

In Panama we got off the plane and had a 9 hour layover. We avoided all the taxi drivers at the airport who wanted to charge us $25 for the ride into the center of Panama City and walked out to the bus stop. There we caught a bus for the 45 minute (supposedly...) ride. Panama has the most amazing buses I’ve ever had the privelege of riding in. They’re all converted school buses and they’re painted all sorts of garish colors on the outside and have the most piercing horns. The best part, though, is the speakers mounted inside that blare whatever music the driver wants to play, usually some utterly danceable Reggaeton. There was one song in particular we heard which was hilarious, where a guy repeated ¨Gringo, gringo, gringo¨ a lot. Good times. Gregg and I made it to the center of Panama City, bought some stuff ($2 board shorts for me and 6/$1 socks for Gregg), and then headed off to see the Canal via another bus. The Canal was big, and there was a great exhibit in the visitor’s center about its construction. Then we hopped back on a bus (which took some waiting) and transferred to our fourth bus in the city center, near Plaza 5 De Mayo. The last bus to the airport broke down several times, and we had to wait for the driver to put in gas once. And there was a traffic jam. But fortunately, we made it to the airport in time and made our 1:15 flight to San Jose Costa Rica.

And now I’m out of time, and I have to sign off. Will write more later.

Yup, it snuck up on me this year.

Thanks to my parents, who called me at work, and Jordan and Rob for their B-day wishes. I hope everyone else has a great day too!!

When I was over at Phil’s house this morning drinking Chamomile tea and eating a microwaved cinnamon roll, his ex-step father’s new wife’s daughter Stephanie (Steph for short) came into the kitchen. Feeling cheeky, I asked her about her sweatshirt which said simply “NSSN.” She said it stood for Not So Slient Night, which made sense.

“Oh,” I said, “and here I thought it was Nissan without the vowels.”

Phil laughed and said he was thinking the very same thing, which only goes to show you that we were twins separated at birth. (Nevermind the fiendishly long, three year labor our collective mother had to endure. I won’t have mere facts standing in the way of an obvious truth!)

Happy New Year, all!

Please note: Thanksgiving pictures are now available. It was a potluck thing, and it was a smashing success: we had tons of leftovers. That was quite a feat, with over twenty people in attendance.