My awesome adventure looooooooooong frikkin’ journey to Seattle started well enough in Melbourne, Australia. Airport check-in was the start of the fun-and-games though. It took over an hour to actually check in and then I found out that the flight had been delayed by 2 hrs. Joy!

All was not lost though, as I had met Darren Gosbell (@darrengosbell) at the airport and we proceeded to have a drink and light lunch at one of the bars. We chatted about the PASS Summit quite a bit as well as the BI Maestro program/exams/certification. once we had boarded the plane, and we were underway the flight was reasonably enjoyable; as much as can be over the course of 14hrs.

My troubles started again in LAX (which is a dump btw). I progressed, slowly, through immigration, customs, picked up my bags and dropped them off at the baggage drop and then proceeded to check-in for my next flight to Seattle. Apparently I had no ticket for this flight. Huh. But it’s right there on my itinerary? 3 phone calls and over an hour later I was running to catch the Alaska Air flight. Thankfully I made it to the gate with 10 mins to spare. Which is all I cared about at that point.

The flight was only a couple of hours and I managed to dose off occasionally. When I was awake I was kept entertained by the interesting landscape of the West Coast. An I may have been dreaming when I saw this and thought “Sim City?”

The mountain below is, what I can only assume, Mount Rainier.

I also managed to snap this pic of Seattle right before we came in to land. I couldn’t quite believe it when it was a clear sunny day!

I’m in Seattle!