Gaborone, Botswana!

Left home eaaaarly Saturday morning. Stayed up packing and watching tv. Allie drove me to the airport.
SEA > ATL
Flight time: 4h:45m slept most of the way, was probably asleep on takeoff.
Layover time: 4h:45m, walked around airport, lunched, emailed, tried not to fall asleep and miss my flight.

ATL > JNB
Flight time: 15h:20m. After boarding the flight was delayed about 1.5 hours. I had a sense something was wrong early on as the in seat video screens showed a red hat linux screen rebooting over and over. They wanted to fix the in flight entertainment for the 15+ hour flight. It was very hot and stuff while waiting. I slept most of the wait, and most of the flight too. Too bad, they probably had nearly 100 movies to choose from. Watched "Inglorious Basterds" and the first few minutes of "The Hangover". Wished I hadn't slept so much. They even had Avatar.

Layover: ~14hrs
Got to Johannesberg "Jo'berg" and through customs no problem. Quick shuttle to the Southern Sun Hotel. Nice place, checked out restaurant, was going to eat, slept, watched TV, slept, couldn't sleep, watched more TV, slept a bit, got ready for my 8:30am flight to Gaborone.

JNB > GBE
Flight time: 45m
Was asked to move to the exit row to provide assistance in case of emergency. Sure!
Humid cloudy day
Flying over Gaborone, lots of red dirt roads cutting through green brush not very far out of the city center.
Nice new terminal! Still under construction, we walked around it. :/
On the shuttle to the hotel, the driver pointed out a nice black Range Rover with blacked out plates and told us it was the President of Botswana. He often drives himself, but today he was in the passenger seat. It was surprising from a USA perspective that he didn't have a large entourage of security. There were a few cars that were probably part of an entourage but no visible police, or roadblocks, etc.
The hotel is the Botswana Sun Hotel and is very nice. Very open air. Casino and pool. I checked in and settled in the room and checked in with Jessica, the local ITECH office contact. We discussed meeting later in the afternoon and then I promptly fell asleep. :) The weather that afternoon was heavy rain and thunderstorms which are apparently unusual, especially this late in the year, plus a presentation going on that afternoon meant our meeting was postponed until Tuesday morning. I checked out the hotel a bit after the rain, and tried in vain to stay awake by watching tv and reading.

To be continued...

Tiger Cruise 2010 (draft)

Uncle Fred arrived on Saturday, went out for Thai food.
Darren arrived Sunday afternoon, went to Tutta Bella, hung out, etc
Monday, ran errands then headed over to the ship.
Took the ferry to Bremerton.
Checked in for the Tiger Cruise.
Darren took Allie, Fred and I on a tour of the ship, berthing, hangar deck, flight deck, Flag bridge, office.
Bid Allie good bye, settled down in the bunks.

Tuesday morning, got up early, ship got under way. Suprisingly nimble for such a huge ship. Stood on flight deck for a while, past Bremerton and past Seattle, past Whidby.
Tours in the Hangar bay
Deck tour (deck hands, fantail, anchor, lines)
Air/Nav tour (Flag bridge, Nav bridge, Air bridge)

Wednesday
Air show, postponed due to weather
No live ordance because of course change to avoid weather :/
Supersonic flyby!
Min radius turn

Thursday

Friday
Pulled into port in San Diego
Sailors "manned the rails" in dress blues.
big reception
Darren proposed to Kina (she said yes)
back to the apt for lunch and R&R
picked up allie in the evening