So after a few days without internet I’m glad I can finally post an update on my travels. A lot has happened and I’m in Salem, Oregon already.

I all began Saturday morning with a very pleasant and uneventful flight to Paris. In Charles de Gaulle airport I had 3 hrs time to change planes and as my luggage wasn’t checked through all the way to Los Angeles I really needed most of that time to check in again. After security checks I could already see the Air Tahiti Nui Airbus sitting at the gate and we boarded “Bora Bora” (that’s the name of the aircraft) very much on time for this 11.5 hrs flight to Los Angeles and on to Papeete, Tahiti - but not for me. The flight was very nice. In economy they have personal screens at every seat so you can watch movies and airshow or play various games. The weather enroute was calm apart from a few chops over the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunately most of the territories we passed were overcast so you couldn’t see much. But by the time we reached the Californian airspace the clouds disappeared and it was bright and sunny when we descended into LAX. After a smooth landing we taxied to the international terminal. All passengers had to leave the plane regardless if they continued the journey to Papeete or not.

At the immigrations the officer questioned me quite a bit. Of course he had noticed that I had just been to the US 2 weeks ago and this made him curious about my job. I guess he suspected I might try to enter the US to work here. But I have to admit that 2 holidays in the US in such a short period of time are rather unusual. However, after a short ‘interview’ I got my stamp and could enter America. The complimentary shuttle brought me to my airport hotel. All this - from touchdown in L.A. to my arrival at the hotel - had only taken about 1 hour! I guess it was because about 90% of the passengers on my flight were continuing on to Papeete and they had to go to a transit lounge. Therefore the queues at the immigration were very short and all went as fast as I wrote above.

As I still had half the afternoon to spend I decided to go to a very famous place for aircraft spotting. It’s a small park right next to an In ‘n’ Out Burger restaurant in the final approach to one of LAX’s runways. The planes are just about 50 metres above your head when they pass! After 2 hours of spotting and a very good ‘double-double’ menu at In ‘n’ Out I went back to my hotel. It was about 8.30 pm already and I was knackered from 9 hrs of jetlag. So I fell asleep pretty soon and got up at 5.30 am again to catch my next flight on to Portland, Oregon.

Thanks to online check-in I just had to drop my bag at the counter and could go through security checks before finally having my breakfast. My flight was scheduled to leave at 9.05 am so I wasn’t in a hurry at all. The routing this time was a bit unusual. Most people would take a direct flight I guess. But I decided to fly with Alaka Airlines partner Horizon and do the trip a bit slower than usual. We first flew up to Eureka/Arcata north of San Francisco Bay right at the ocean. I could then just stay on the aircraft before we did a short 20 minute hop to Redding in North California. It was again a very sunny day and I could enjoy some very nice views - also thanks to the fact that our aircraft (a DeHavilland Canada Dash-8) doesn’t fly as high as jets. From Redding we passed Mount Shasta and the more we got towards Portland the more clouds there were. To my surprise it didn’t rain when we landed but it was heavily overcast.

I took my luggage and went to the rental car center to collect my car. I had booked an economy car the smallest they had was a Mitsubishi Outlander… That’s the USA! The drive down to Salem took about 45 minutes and after checking in at the hotel I headed straight to the friends I’m visiting here. We spent the evening talking and with a nice dinner. There was a lot to talk as my last visit was 14 years ago!

Today we might do a little trip to the Pacific Ocean. Tomorrow I’m off to San Jose for the concert there. So my next message might either come from there or Sacramento. It’s a pretty tight schedule really!

Ulli

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Genesis: Notes from the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.