And so it begins..........

• Wait for the shuttle to pick me up: 20 minutes
• Wait at the border: 3 hours and counting
• Switching buses to get ahead: 10 minutes if we included getting hell from the border agent
• Interrogation time: 7 minutes
• Having a border agent who'd been abducted: priceless

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Where do I start? This might be a long post, hope you're along for the ride!

We missed our plane. The border line up - insane. We sat for over three hours. And wondered if we should have flown out of Vancouver instead of Seattle. If it weren't for a thoughtful driver, who came back and placed me on the bus closer to the front of the line, and with my traveling companion (yes, we were on separate shuttles), we would have been even later. Thankfully, we were able to grab another flight and we ended up only an hour out.

We had a funny border guard too. Well, he thought he was funny. We told him what we were going down to LA for. He gave us the strangest look.

"The X Files?"

"Yes, best television ever. And now a second movie."

"Isn't that about aliens?"

"Well, yes. But it's so much more than that." I was preparing to launch into a synopsis of 9 years of the best television ever when he got this funny little smirk on his face.

"Ever been beamed up before?"

My traveling companion piped up, "it's a common misconception that everyone who watches the show believes in that stuff. I certainly don't."

"Neither do I." I added.

Now, David Duchovny has a wonderful explanation about why aliens are always drilling our teeth and probing our anal regions, and it was almost out of my mouth when I realized this was a USA border guard.

And he probably was packing. The last thing I needed to do was piss him off.

I clamped my mouth shut.

"Well, I've been beamed up. Lots of times."

Now I was really glad I kept my anal probing comment to myself.

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Which brings me to today.

I don't sleep very well when I'm not in my own bed. I drift in and out of sleep, always conscious of sleeping, if that makes sense to anyone.

And I dream. Weird stuff.

Last night my dreams were filled with a hotel that had dirt floors, a shrinking room with mustard yellow walls, some old guys roasting a pig (which totally grosses me out -- I don't eat dead things), and a big, burly guy with a Harley and a bandanna made from tearing apart a cloth napkin.

Seriously.

At five am I finally decided to get up. And then i waited. Nothing is open that early.

Finally, at six am someone kind soul had pity on me and drove me to a Starbucks. She had been up all night. And when she referred to her very young traveling companion as one of 'her girls' --
let's just say, I work with marginalized/at risk youth and I must have been tired because I was slow to pick up on what the situation might have been. I could still be wrong, but .... I'll leave that right there. It was lovely of her to drive me there and back.

Now I had my coffee. And soon as that was in me, I could go for a run.

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Those hotel maps they give you?

Not to scale.

And I have complete and total empathy for all those runners/dog walkers who travel to use the trails that are just down the street from me.

Running on pavement bites. Seriously.

I had to walk a lot of it as I'm just coming off an achilles tendon pull and i certainly didn't want to blow out my knee again. I eventually found myself at Fernwood and some kind soul directed me to the treed path.

Much better.

So, now for some random stuff:

Number of X Files posters we saw driving in: 8!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what a thrill!
Number of X Files posters I saw on my run: 2 - but one was HUGE! At the corner of Franklin and ??? Darn, I forget the cross street.
Biggest thrill? walking past Grauman's ChineseTheatre and thinking, in three days we'll be here!
ciao for now!