Ken Curtis' blog «

I got into Dallas I think on Thursday. Time has been slipping by so fast I sometimes have a hard time staying caught up on the day and the date. If you’ve followed along with my blog you know that I’m here to prepare for an interview on the 18th in New Mexico. The transfer from the airport to the hostel went without a hitch, but it wasn’t fun. I landed at about 11, and didn’t get to the hostel until about 2am. I did make it so all is good. I’m also slowly getting over a cold I got while I was in Portland.

As I mentioned I landed in Dallas late on the 11th (Thursday) and made my way to the hostel about 16 miles away. I had three options to get to the hostel, I could take a train, I could take a taxi, or I could call Uber. The taxi would be too expensive, I don’t have an Uber account, so that left my only option the train. It took me so long to find the train station that it was midnight before I actually got there, then I had to wait for the train to actually leave, and because it was so late the trains were on partial schedules. The train left the station about 15 minutes after I boarded and it took maybe 25 minutes before it stopped at the end of the line. Like I mentioned since it was late the trains were running shortened routes. So I had to transfer to another train. When the train pulled into the station, there were about three police just wandering around…you know that there could be a problem if at 12:30am there are police hanging out at a train stop. When I say station, it’s more or less just a platform not like an actual station, anyway I made it.

Today was a very good day. If you’ve read many of my posts you should notice that I pretty much speak honestly, and honestly, I can say was a very good day. It was so good to that I finally got to see my Brother in over six years. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see my Mother though. I guess she wasn’t home when we stopped by her house.

I woke up and started moving at about 8 or so. I had hoped to wake up much earlier, but with the time difference I had a bit of a problem falling asleep last night. So my brother and I decided to meet up at about 10/11 and then headed out for breakfast. About the only meals that you can’t get overseas are the traditional American breakfasts. You can come close, but there is nothing better than bacon and eggs, pancakes and coffee to start off a day. Many of the smaller countries in Asia don’t do ham/bacon and none the countries do pancakes. In fact I don’t think in the last five years I’ve seen one pancake.

The Oregon coast is so rugged and beautiful.

Our first stop was just to drive around and sight see some of the changes that have happened since I lived here. Much of my childhood and most of the adult life I lived in Portland. It wasn’t until about 1997 that I moved to New Mexico and later to Texas. So every time I come back to Portland I want to see what’s changed. Sometimes it’s huge changes, maybe a whole block will have been removed and replaced with condos, but other times, like this time, there doesn’t seem to be very many big changes. Sure some businesses are gone or new businesses have sprouted up, but for the most part everything pretty much seemed the same.

After that we went to visit my nephew and then decided to go to the beach. It was raining and cold. I can’t emphasize the “cold” enough… and just in case there I wasn’t totally clear, it was cold. :) I’ve always had a connection to the Oregon coast. I think it was because I spent so much time there as a child that I felt like it was mine. Seriously, I know that sounds weird, but it’s true, the connection was so strong that I felt like it was my personal coastline. My brother wanted to go to a park that has a viewing spot where you can see a light house out in the distance. So we headed there. When we got to the park we saw a herd of elk grazing beside the parking lot. It was so cool, a whole herd of about 15 (we actually counted but I forgot how many) elk just hanging out.

Since I didn’t think that we would be going anywhere that I’d need a camera today I didn’t bring mine. I did have my phone, so I did manage a few photos. Unfortunately, my phone didn’t last very long and before I was done the battery was dead. I hate when that happens, but least I did get some photos and I probably would have only take maybe ten more, so it’s okay. I’ll include them in this post. My brother had his camera and it’s much better than my phone so if he sends me some of the ones that he took, then maybe I’ll post them here.

By the time we had taken the photos is was starting to feel like the sun was going down. I say feel because it was already dark from the cloud cover, but it just seemed darker, and in reality it was pushing 5pm at that point. So we headed back to the city, about 100 miles away. I got back to the hostel at 7 and went to a grocery store for dinner. Don’t laugh, there are some good meals to be had at some stores. I ate orange chicken, spicy green bean chicken, fried rice, and pot stickers for dinner. It was really good.

I think that’s all for now. Tomorrow I’m back on the road and will be heading to Dallas early afternoon. I’m getting so close to finishing my travels I can almost taste it. :)

Most of the herd that was grazing. There was still another group nearby.

[Updated]I hope this post doesn’t come off as too negative. I’m trying my best to be as open and as objective about what’s going on at the moment, but I kind of feel as if I’m being too negative. That being said, I’m sitting in the airport in Honolulu waiting for my flight in a couple of hours. It’s early and I can tell today has the chance to work out okay or it could possibly fall apart and there won’t be anything I can do to stop it. I’ll explain further down. I’m flying Southwest and I’m nervous about the flight too, mostly about where I’ll get to sit.

I’ve been trying to get everything in order before I arrive in Portland later today and besides my attempts it seems that this trip will be a waste of time and money. I initially thought that I’d stay in Portland with family until I head to NM early next week. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a hold of anyone, and there just didn’t seem to be any reason for me to stay in Portland if I wasn’t going to be spending time with family. I decided to book my flight to Dallas earlier than I expected it’s on the 11th. I did receive an email from a family member afterwards. [Update: I have been in communication with a family member, and we’re planning on meeting up tomorrow… so that worked out]

I also booked a place in Portland for two nights. I told them that I would be arriving late, about midnight. They replied with, “Don’t expect to show up and have someone be here, the office closes at 2200.” I also had me arriving on the 10th, so they told me to change my reservation and let them know when I will be arriving. So I did that. I changed my reservation and sent them an email requesting a late check in. Their response was that I needed to call them and let them know that I’ll be checking in late. I responded with, I will be traveling all day so I would like to request now. They replied with please call us to let us know if you’ll be checking in late. I replied back, “As I mentioned, I’ll be traveling all day, and I don’t have a phone, so I can’t call you. Please use this email as my request at a late check in.” Now I’m waiting for confirmation on a late check in. So I’m kind of stressing on whether they’ll just ignore me and I’ll show up to a locked door. I just don’t understand why they are making it so difficult… I haven’t faltered once on whether I’ll be there or what time I’ll arrive. My guess is that no one wants to wait around until midnight for me to arrive, and maybe they hope if they are difficult enough I’ll just give up. [Update: Just got an email from them giving me the information I need for late check in. So I’m good to go on that.]

I mentioned that I’m flying Southwest. This is the first time I’ve ever flown with them and to be honest I always told myself that I wouldn’t ever book with them. I had heard some kind of bad stuff, lots of good stuff too, but the bad stuff like legroom kept me from wanting to fly with them. When I booked the flight the price was pretty good so I decided to give them a try. I found out at check in that it’s open seating. I’ve never experienced that before, but I guess once you get on board you pick the seat that you want. No assigned seats. That just scares me. The very real possibility of being forced into a middle seat between two people for a prolonged amount of time gives me some serious anxiety. [Update: I have just landed in Oakland, and I got to say that my flight here was one of the best I’ve had in recent times. Way to go, Southwest!]

The view from the window on my flight today. This is about 15 minutes out of Oakland. If you look close you can see how rough the sea was.

So now I’m sitting on the floor of the Oakland airport waiting for my flight in about 3 hours. I say 3 hours, but they keep pushing the time back, it was 945, then 955, then 10, now it’s 1015. I hope that it isn’t delayed any more than that. This flight is with Southwest too. I’m curious if my other flight from Honolulu was an anomaly, or all of SW’s flights are that good. The delay isn’t giving me too much confidence though. :)

It is so strange being back in the US, you know, the actual US. Hawaii is the US but it’s so touristy where I was at, that it still kind of felt like I was more of a tourist than anything. Here I’m just a regular guy just hanging out in the airport waiting for my flight. Anyway, I digress. it is strange to be back. For the most part there doesn’t feel like anything has changed, but also that quite a bit has. I don’t know what other way than that to describe it. I think the base American caricature [I chose that word because there is a stereotype of what an American is] is still the same, but the things around them are different. The people are still as friendly as I remember them, they will jump into a conversation with anyone at the slightest opportunity. It’s so strange, but also so endearing. On the other side I haven’t seen a restaurant that I recognize in the airport. Not one. If I was on the east coast I just say it was a regional thing, but I am kind of close, relatively speaking, to Portland, you’d think I recognize some business. Even if it’s a coffee shop, burger place, convenience store, something, but so far nothing yet.

I was only scheduled to be in Hawaii for three days and I leave for the mainland tomorrow morning. I’ve got to admit I haven’t been doing the tourist-thing very well. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the time difference that my body is trying to deal with, or maybe it’s the idea that I never intended for this to be a vacation, more of just a long layover. Whatever the reason, I have been very boring since I got here.

A strange thing happened to me yesterday, sorry, that sounds a little dramatic, maybe the best way to say it is just that I ended up sleeping for over 15 hours. I couldn’t believe it when I looked at my phone. 15 hours! I’m sure at some point in my life I’ve slept like that, but I can’t remember when. I was talking to one of the other guest here and he said it’s because of the time difference, basically it was jetlag. I don’t know though, seems a little bit weird to me.

Anyway, after waking up about 2pm I decided that I needed to do something so I headed out to try to find some food. I ended up walking to beach and walked by a Walmart. Oh, I like Walmarts. There is something that just feels right when I walk though the doors, like I’ve got permission to buy anything I want. Somewhere along through life I just decided to trust Walmart to have the best prices so I rarely shop when I’m there, I buy. :)

My flight leaves Honolulu tomorrow morning at 9, so I’ve scheduled my taxi for 6. I know it’s early but I would rather be waiting at the airport than cutting it too close and stressing all the way to the airport.

I’ve also booked a room at a hostel in Portland. It’s strange but I can’t seem to get a hold of anyone in my family. I don’t know what’s going on if I’ve done something wrong, or they aren’t home to take a call, or something else. I guess when you haven’t seen someone for over 6 years, there just isn’t a loss when you don’t see them for longer. It’s just strange though… I need to fly to TX so I’ll have maybe two days, maybe 1 (since I can’t seem to contact my family) to see how the city has changed.

So I got in about 11:30 this morning and everything went really well. I got through passport control and did all the usual things really quickly. The only drawback was that I was forced to use a taxi instead of some other relatively cheaper method of getting into the city. It kind of sucked having to pay $40 to go 9 miles but I didn’t have any other way.

I still don’t have any clue how the hours worked out though. I left Osaka at 11:30 pm and the pilot said that it was a 6 hour flight, but I got there 12 hours later plus 24 hours earlier. So I don’t know if I got 2 hours of sleep or 10 hours of sleep. I guess it doesn’t matter, but I felt like I slept about 3 or 4 hours total.

I took off from the hostel at about 2 this afternoon for a walk. I kind of wanted to go to the beach, but I wasn’t set on it. I think Diamond Head has always been cool to me so it was my plan to go in that direction. So I started walking. I’m not sure how far I walked, but probably less than 10 miles, but long enough for my legs to be tired. I ended up getting to the beach after wandering for a bit.

Back when I was here as a teenager, when my Mom took me, I remember not being too impressed with the beaches. I can confirm, I’m still not that impressed. Don’t get me wrong the beaches I saw today were okay, they just aren’t in the same league as some of the ones I seen in other places. There just isn’t enough beach. There’s only about 25 to 30 feet of sand before the water. Maybe it was high tide though.

Just a photo of people having fun in the water.

When I got there the sun was headed down and I got some great views of a some sailboats in silhouette. Lots of people were there and everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.

Having just left Kuala Lumpur, I am currently flying over the south china sea on my way to Osaka, Japan. It was kind of a stressful morning for me. I’m not sure why, but things just seemed to be not flowing like I would expect, or maybe how I would have hoped. Nevertheless, I made it to the airport and caught the flight without any real problems.

A photo taken in Myanmar a few years ago. I love the smile on the girls face.

So last night I went to bed pretty early, about 830 or 9 just so I could wake early and still be refreshed for the journey. I made sure to set both my alarms just to make guarantee that I would get up. At about 1230 after nearly four hours of lying in bed and watching movies I started to get worried that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at all. At about 115 I finally dozed off until my alarms went off at 5am. Geez. I got to tell you I was so out of it today I could barely function.

As I I was finishing my packing and getting ready to leave the hostel, I realized that I didn’t have my key. Crap! I looked everywhere in the room and still couldn’t find it. So I started tearing my bags apart thinking that maybe I packed it accidently or maybe left it in a pocket of the shorts I wore yesterday. No luck, I’d burned about 30 minutes and I still didn’t know where the keys were. Eventually I just gave up and apologized to the guy working at the counter, and also gave him 50rm ($12)

So the day wasn’t starting the way that I had hoped it would. I always like to get up early and feel rested the day I travel just because there are mistakes or decisions that are made that have more serious consequences than if I wasn’t traveling. Forgetting a passport or a power cord wouldn’t be terrible if you just had to go without for a day, but consider if you’re at the airport looking for your passport and maybe realize that you left it on the bed. It’s a perfect way to mess up what would normally be a fun and exciting day.

So I digress. Looking for the key had set me back about 20 minutes and I was now running late to get to the airport. I usually leave 3-hours early, sometime 4-hours, and I was leaving less than 3. I’m rushing around trying my best to get to the subway and train as fast as I can. All that goes pretty good, It generally takes about an hour to get to the airport from KL and I think it only took me about 40 minutes. I’m basically on schedule now and I go to check in, all standard stuff, except I learned that the flight wasn’t until 2pm, an hour later than what I thought. Second I found out that I don’t have a layover in Osaka as I previously thought. I was so convinced of those two thing I actually checked my literary when I got to the gate and then went online to see what the flight time was between the two cities. I have no idea how I got it so wrong. I even showed someone at the hostel my flight details a few days ago and I could have sworn she and I both agreed my flight was at 1pm. Maybe I said something like, “Yeah, see, I leave at 1.” And she just agreed with me… I don’t know but I feel like it was a glitch in matrix or something. Same goes with the layover. How could I ‘know’ that I had 12 hours in Osaka and it turns out that I have about 2? I must be going senile or maybe I’ll get a call from Morpheus.

Like I said though, everything turned out okay. I’m sitting in the airplane with a row completely to myself and my row is the front row without any seats in front of me. So, I’ve got it really good right now. It’s the reason I’m actually on my computer now because I actually have enough room to type.

I’m sitting in the airport in Osaka. It’s really quiet here, no massive amounts of people running around trying to get somewhere. I guess it is Saturday night though, so I suppose it would be one of the more quiet nights. I don’t know though, maybe not. :) It is really nice though not to feel rushed.

I’ve got about two hours before my flight takes off, so I’m thinking I may either play a game or maybe clean my computer… I don’t know which sounds like more fun? My computer is so dirty I was hiding it on the plane earlier…the room I was staying in was so dark, and that coupled with my poor eyesight I guess that I just never noticed it. It’s disgusting though.

My name is Ken

Dallas for the last few days

Hanging with my Brother

A full day of traveling w/updates

My last day in Hawaii

My first day in Honolulu

The Journey