I am writing this travel log six months after the fact from my notes hand written while traveling. This is solely in response to a commitment made to myself back when I was nineteen: When I travel, I journal. Now at forty it is tough to come close to my nineteen year old expectations. I mean twenty years ago my travel journal was going to be my bridge to fame, my nugget of incite to be found by curious grandkids…now, twenty-one years later as I write this alone, in my empty home it lacks the same punch. Nevertheless, I write because I do enjoy taking a peak of that person, five, ten, twenty years in the past. Maybe this time I will glean something enlightening.

Enlighten on this, sixty-year old me: US Airways Sucks. I had my flight all planned out: I was going to relax during my six hour layover in Philly, I was to sleep the duration of my red-eye to Dublin and I would take on the day the moment we hit the tarmac. Prior to leaving Portland, I went to the US Airways website I paid extra to get a window seat with increased leg room. In the Philadelphia airport I ate healthy foods brought from Portland, I avoided the airport concessions.

What I should have done during my zen layover was double check my seat assignment because my priority seat was not printed on my boarding pass. Instead I was seated in the last row of the plane in a chair that reclined an inch before hitting the bathroom wall. I was in the section of the plane with all the undesirables: The crying babies in stereo only over shadowed by high-schoolers on a class trip to the Emerald Isle. Sitting next to me were two girls who carried on a nine hour conversation over the sound of their headphones.

The plane departed an hour late. It appeared the flight crew was waiting on a connecting flight to fill the remaining seats onboard. I tried in vain to get my original seat assignment but was told that on this plane that "seat did not exist." When the plane finally lifted I managed to keep my cool but nearly lost it in flight when the attendant told me my mini bottle of wine with dinner was going to cost six dollars. The last perk of international flight is gone. I wasn't going to buy booze on the plane I had already paid $125 to check my bag and there was no way I was going to pay six dollars on my drink therapy. I switched to a free coke and did not sleep a wink for the next six hours.