Well, this is it. My luggage is packed. My visa is in order. I have a plane ticket. Tomorrow at 2:30PM I board a sky blue Korean Air Boeing 777 bound for Seoul. My emotional response is a cool mix of excitement and fears amplified by my rather active imagination. In all truth, this is the happiest I have been in months.


I arrived safely in San Francisco in the first hour of Monday morning. The 737 landed with a bump and the cabin lights flickered to life. The sleeping passengers groaned and grumped as they awoke from their slumber. I, being in the middle seat and having no friendly shoulder upon which to rest my head, had fallen asleep bolt upright. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and stared out the window. It had been a long flight.

After a long cab ride I arrived at my cousin's house in Berkeley and her boyfriend let me in. He introduced me to their couch and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I had not intended to fly to San Francisco. I had intended to drive with my friend Wes from Silver Gate, Montana in the beat up plumbers' van he bought from his dad for $720. The van had performed splindidly throughout Wesley's 2000 mile roadtrip, including the 200 or so miles he and I drove together through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. However, the van had not been pushed much beyond 50 miles per hour the whole trip in the cool mountain roads of Montana. The drive to San Francisco would be a grueling twenty hour march across the hot, arid landscapes of Utah, Nevada and California. The last thing I wanted was to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with my thumb in the air. So I bought an airline ticket.

Sunday afternoon Wes and his friend Amy escorted me and my 100 pounds of luggage to Billings, Montana, for the flight first to Las Vegas, and then on to San Francisco. We drove throught beautiful Asorka wilderness on the Cheif Joseph Highway. It was the most scenic stretch of American road I have ever traveled. A deep canyon marked where the Clark's Fork of The Yellowstone River cut through the 10,000 foot high mountains towering high above. I spent the better part of the trip with my face pressed against the window, mouth agape, staring in wonder at the natural splindor dwarfing the tiny white van.

Wes dropped me off at Billings International. The dreaded SSSS showed up on my ticket and I watched helplessly as friendly TSA officials took everything out of my carefully packed luggage and ran various tests on all of it. I too, was scanned from head to toe for the second time in a week. This is what I get for buying one-way tickets.

On the flight to Las Vegas I met a nice young woman from Minnesota who worked part-time for the Mayo Clinic and spent much of her spare time doing mission work for her church around the world. The oldest of ten children, she had lots to say about traveling abroad and teaching. I hung out with her until she caught her plane home in Las Vegas.

Once in San Francisco, I made haste to get my visa processed. The Korean consulate is in Presidio Heights, though I hardly knew that. All I had was an address: 3500 Clay Street. I looked on a map at the train station and began walking up Powell Street. It was a beautiful day. The sky was a deep blue and the air was cool. Still, I worked up a monstrous sweat as I climbed the incredibly steep street. A streetcar passed me by and the people on board looked at me as if they were thinking, "God, I'm glad I'm not that guy." After a few blocks of this futile travel and a bite to eat, I caught a cab to the consulate.

A bureaucrat at the Korean consulate, a plain white building on the top of a hill in the affluent Presidio Heights neighborhood, gladly accepted my documents and $45 dollars cash and told me to return at 4:45. I thanked him and walked into the cool breeze. Far down the hill I watched a small fleet of tiny sailboats glide under the Golden Gate Bridge. I set course for the Golden Gate Park and went on my way.

A few hours, a nap and a newspaper and I walked back to the consulate. I got my visa just as promised.

When I got back to Berkeley my cousin and her boyfriend took me out to dinner. The next day my computer died and I had to take it to the Apple store to be repaired. They accompanied me on that excursion and we extended it to include a tour of China Town and Pier 41 where I got a much better view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

It's been a wild week, but I have finally made it here, my jumping-off point. I liken this leg of the journey to the first time I jumped off of the high-dive at the swimming pool as a child. There you are at the top, twenty feet off the pool deck, a long line of kids extending down the ladder, cutting off any hope of turning back. You have to jump.

--Stephen

PS-As I said before, my computer's video card died today and the Apple people told me it would be 7 to 10 days before they would have it repaired and shipped to my folks in Atlanta. So with shipping to Korea it will be a solid month before I have my computer back in my hands. Don't worry, the blog will continue, but alas probably without photos.