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What will you do with your one wild and precious life?
Cross the equator and travel in the southern hemisphere.
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03 January 2008

I've always loved airline travel and don't understand how people can be so against it. 

Let me rephrase that-- I did always love airline travel and now understand how people can be so against it.

Our traveling cohort left Seatac airport at 11:05 am(ish) for Dallas/Ft. Worth. We had an expected two-and-a-half hour layover, which extended into an unexpected four hour layover.  Porque?  Our plane was in the mechanical shed and the “tractor” that was supposed to pull it to the gate "broke". So, being highly intelligent college students, we began a debate of which actually broke—the plane or the tractor. Somewhere in that process, Andy went exploring under the lounge seats and found a forgotten copy of Stephen Colbert's "I Am America (And So Can You!)" which was adopted as the group's newest companion.

Longer story short, we finally got on the plane an hour late, the overhead lights don’t work, and our in-seat audio channels don’t work for the movie. Drag.
 
I am a genuinely dorky and nerdy individual. I am that person who will make a wish at 08:08 am on August 8, 2008 [08:08:08 08/08/08] because it will never again happen in my lifetime. I hold my breath when crossing from one state into another just to "pollute" the new state with transient air (a quirky tradition set by my dad). I still play padiddle in the car. I knock on wood. It's not so much childish as merely appreciating every wild and unique moment life has to offer.

All which goes to explain why
 I am intently staring out the window, in the middle of the night, while our airplane approaches the equator. 

Currently, 2:16 am in Argentina and 9:16 pm on the West coast, we are crossing the equator.  This crossing is the first thing that I am seriously excited about.  So far, all of my traveling adventures have been in the northern hemisphere.  This exact moment marks my first time visiting the southern hemisphere and somehow it seems fitting that I will be going to the very bottom of the southern hemisphere.  After being told, since first grade, that I would never get to go to Antarctica, I find myself making everyone eat their words as I'm actually going there. 

I cannot imagine anywhere I would rather be at this moment, living out my answer to Mary Oliver's question, as I wait to see what adventures Argentina and Antarctica have to add to my one wild and crazy life. 


03.5 January 2008
I have just become a master of twenty-three ways NOT to sleep on an overnight international flight.


02 JANUARY 2008
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04 January 2008

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