[Welcome to a series of chapters that cover my 9 day trip to see one of my favorite people here at theO, Red tigress. We have known each other for, I believe, a little over 4 years now. We met each other here, on theotaku.com. Over the course of the years, we have become great friends, and we decided it would be great to see each other in person and to also go to an anime convention together. Thus, our story starts, with me, traveling to place where she lives. This story will be written from my perspective and will involve what I felt, and did over the course of the trip. I also wrote it in diary format. For Red's perspective, please visit her site.]
Chapter One: Duo Arrives
Saturday May 17, 2008- May 18, 2008.
After coming home from a long night's work at the hospital, I arrived back on my side of town around 8am. I decided that it might be a good idea to have some actual canadian money for our trip before I left, so I waited around the house for the bank to open up at 9am. After arriving at my bank, they tell me they are not a big enough company to convert currencies, so I drive around until I find a "real" bank, which happened to be Intrust. I go up to the teller and ask if they convert currencies. She says yes and I start to get excited but when I mention Canada she starts "Oh..." and her smile drops. "We can't convert Canadian dollars here....you have to go downtown. Oh wait...the downtown office is closed Saturdays." Then another teller chimes in with "when do you need it?" "Tomorrow," I say. "Just use your card," she says. "It'll take two weeks to get that kinda currency. Plus if you use your card, you'll get a better exchange rate." So I leave, feeling frustrated, that I just wasted 45 mins trying to figure that out, and frustrated why we can't have an at least small supply of our northern neighbors' currency.
Then I went to the shoe store. They were having an half-price sale so I got two sandles. As I was going to pay a guy comes on the intercom and says, "The next person to come up to the kiosk and say who the artist of the song now playing is will recieve $2 off their purchase!" So i camly walk up there and guess it correctly, and win! The song was a Phil Collins song, and while I was checking out the cashier and I had a long conversation about whether the song was during Genesis or post-Genesis. It was fun and hilarious.
So after that adventure, I came home and it was around 1pm, so I decided to go to bed until someone woke me up to start packing and stuff. Well, no one woke me up! So i woke up around 8pm, and think to myself "Shoot. I haven't even started packing yet!" I wanted to go to my friend's graduation party and go to the River Festival Fireworks but alas. That didn't happen. I stayed awake until 1am when I finally decided to get some rest. Well, one problem there...I never went to sleep. I set my alarm for 4:15am because my dad said we would leave around 5am. So i got out of bed, and no one was awake, so I turned on the T.V. and low and behold, what was on the TCM? "Seven Samurai" The old jap movie the animated series "samurai 7" is based on! So i watched like 30-45 mins of it until someone finally woke up around 5am! Needless to say, we left a little late. The car ride up to Kansas City wasn't too eventfull, still couldn't sleep, even in the car, so dad and I sang songs from the Big Tracks station on the XM radio.
We made it to the airport with no incident and check in was really easy. Now, I haven't flown in a plane since like 1996, so i was new to all these security measures. They have this new thing where you drop off your checked bags in this area. I had a duffel bag and had it tied around the handles and the security guy said "You have to unstap it." Now i was standing right infront of this barrier thing and I thought he meant unstrap the barrier thing to get the bag to him, haha....noooo. He yelled "Put it back!" after i did that, and he just came and took the bag himself. Well it's not my fault, he didn't make himself very clear. I had no idea what he meant. After that, though there wasn't anything else, though my flight was delayed.
Now, I love people-watching. People are soo stupid. While waiting for the plane, I saw lots of different people. One, I saw a 40-something guy take a picture of a younger woman around my age with his camera phone. Yuck!! Also, I sat next to some old people who smelt of coffee. Then a lady came and sat behind me, and kept looking over my shoulder while I was playing my D.S. I thought to myself, "what, do you want to play pokemon too?" Apparently she was looking for someone, but I didn't find that out until the flight was about to board. Lastely, some guy who was last to board tried to board with the first class people. Haha, baka. One of my fears was that I would have to sit next to a old fat person on the plane, but I sat next to a young indian woman. She was really nice and didn't speak much english. During the flight we got pretzels and pop I was glad cuz by that time i was getting a little hungry. There was a little bit of turbulance, but all in all, it wasn't too bad.
It was raining in the airport and we had to use a "staircar" to get off the plane. Then we had to walk about 20 paces on the tarmat and then take another set of stairs back up into the terminal. Then I got lost in the airport. I called Red-chan, and she led me in the right direction. Then I took a shuttle that looked like something from Star Wars! Seriously it was like a big box with wheels! Then I finally go to see Red-chan!! Hehe, I gave her a big hug!
It took awhile for the luggage to come from the plane, so we battled each other in Pokemon. Red-chan totally kicked my butt with her level 40-something pokemon. My poor Pip-kun was only level 19. Anyways, the luggage finally arrived and we set out for home!
Virgina here I come!!!
