My battle.....

It was an interesting flight to Chicago from Brisbane. First I had to fly from Brisbane to LA. This flight is between 13.5 and 14 hours. I had a rather large gentleman sitting next to me who decided that it would be fun if we were touching for most of the flight. I wasn't weirded out by this too much at first, but then I briefly broke my entertainment system and it played Brokeback Mountain. That's when the touching started to bother me.
It wasn't just the awkward arm to arm contact that was bothering me. Eventually he fell asleep and sure enough, began to snore. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much on the plane, maybe 40 minutes at most. Fortunately, once Brokeback was over, my entertainment system was working again, so I was able to play games and watch most of Syriana before we landed. It was a real battle for most of the flight because we kept fighting for control of the arm rest, which he won because I kept getting up to move around. I think he stole my pillow one of those times too.

When we landed in LA, it was 7 am on Wednesday. The best part about that was when I left Brisbane, it was 11 am on Wednesday. Don't think about that too much because it really starts to hurt the brain.

The flight from LA to Chicago was much better. I purchased some Tylenol PM at LAX and I was asleep before we took off. I slept for most of that flight. Then it was a 5.5 hour drive from Chicago to Altoona before I could go to bed for the night. I finally got to sleep around 11:45 pm.

But the fun continued the next morning. I woke up at 6:30, got ready and drove to Cedar Rapids to see my kids at Prairie View on their last day, which was pretty cool. I also visited my Lemme kids and hung out with Mike and his wife Lianne that night. They asked to see all my pictures, which I think they were regretting two hours later.

That night was awesome because I returned to my old apartment and filled up the air mattress and laid down. I woke up 20 minutes later and found myself sleeping on the floor because the mattress was leaking air. Still, it was a great night's sleep.