We don't have any pictures of the 22nd, so I thought I'd show you what we were expecting to see.  The mountains above Garmisch-Partentirchen from the Zugspite's summit.

September 22

I usually wake up around 7 a.m. most mornings.  If I’m waking up earlier than that time, then I must be doing something out of the ordinary.  So, when I found myself being awakened at 5:30 a.m., I knew that I would be heading off on a trip.  We had driven up to Monterey the night before to stay with my folks in their house.  They were nice enough to wake us up after only five hours of sleep, so that we could catch a shuttle bus to San Francisco.  I groggily got up, knowing that this was going to be a very long day.

My father drove us to the bus stop to catch the shuttle.  We used the Monterey-Salinas Airbus, which we had also used on our trip to Greece in 2001.  As was the case in 2001, the shuttle was on-time for departure.  I hugged my dad, paid the $40/person charge, and got on the shuttle.

As most of you know, I have a healthy fear of flying.  For this trip, this fear was heightened by several factors.  First, this was my initial flight to Europe since the 9/11 attacks.  Given that incident and the recent subway attacks in London, I had visions of terrorists running wild on the plane.  Second, there had been several airplane crashes in the months leading up to this flight.  While all of these crashes involved “low-cost” carriers, I was still concerned…especially since we would be flying on an airline that was (at the time) in bankruptcy.  Finally, I wouldn’t be flying on a British Airways 747.  Instead, we were flying on a United 777.  I drew a modicum of security from the 747’s four engines.  I worried what would happen if one of the 777’s two engines failed.

We got to San Francisco Airport a bit behind schedule.  But, we were still early enough to get our boarding passes and quickly move through security.  We boarded the plane just a bit after 11:30 a.m.  At ten after noon, we were on our way to London.  I went through my usual panic attack on takeoff.  But, when I didn’t see any terrorists appear, and it seemed like the engines were working fine, I began to calm down.  I got even calmer when I noticed how smooth the flight was going (better than some of the 747 flights I’ve taken).  I grew cautiously optimistic that this flight would actually make it to London.

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