As I mentioned on the morning of my departure, there's a certain amount of exhilaration in the whole family (well, with a few exceptions) coming together, walking away from their everyday lives for two weeks to travel to a distant shore, like the introduction of a superhero movie. The feeling of coming together to create a greater whole is almost palpable.

To be precise, today started with Karen and I finishing my packing for the trip. Karen came over yesterday to help me put my bags together, motivate, and help make sure I didn't forget anything.

Karen took off for her home at 12:01am and I was asleep soon after. At around 6 I woke up to do my final reality check, put my bags into my car, and drive over to Karen and Crystal's, where Karen would drive me to Oakland Airport and I would meet up with Emily, creating the first grouping in the inverse tree which, days later, would eventually result in the big Fox trunk.

Jet lag is always a funny thing when you're travelling across 9 time zones in a day, but from a personal perspective, July 3rd and 4th joined into one very long day. (As I write these words I'm actually on the return flight, on the Munich-Los Angeles leg of a journey that started at 4:30am local time in Istanbul and will end over 26 hours later, somewhere around 9pm in what, at 34 hours, will literally be the longest day of my life.) Today's travel (meaning July 3rd. I'm playing fast and loose with verb tenses to hide the fact that I'm actually recapping these events two weeks removed (and using parentheses to bring that fact into clear focus, so go figure)) includes meeting up with Emily for a 10am Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland International (OAK) to Los Angeles International (LAX) where we would, an hour or so later, meet up with the majority of my family at the Bradley International Terminal to check in for our 2:20pm departure for Munich, subsequent hour-long layover, and 2 hour hop to Barcelona, our destination for the next several days.

So I arrived at Karen's on the later side of 8:30am and we piled the bags into her trunk and parked my car on Alameda's friendly streets. (Friendly, that is, compared to Berkeley's streets, where a car with expired registration tabs (bad Kev!) can go weeks without notice, then get three tickets and a complimentary tow within 73 hours.) She drove me to the airport and by the time the gate opened for check-in I had been, in rather atypical fashion, waiting around for a good 10 minutes. Emily should have had such good luck...

Emily's mode of airport transport was to be City Express. She called them the day before, arranging for an 8:30 pick-up. At 8:35 she gave them a call and they told her the shuttle would be at her door in 10 to 15 minutes. Within the next 15 minutes the only thing that rolled to her door was an ever-growing feeling of unease, and as 8:50 came and went Emily gave them another call and they told her (with just over an hour before her flight was going to take off) that they weren't going to pick her up at all.

After panic, phone calls, a hurried taxi ride and a promise from the airporter company to cover it, Em arrived intact and ready to leave San Francisco behind.