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Trip Report: Day 1 of 5 (Thursday, July 12, 2001)
Today after so long in the planning, my trip has officially started. My brother drove me from his apartment in Minnetonka, MN up to the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport. My flight on Sun Country Airlines was supposed to take off around 9:00 AM, but we ended up taxing behind six or seven other planes for a bit. Finally, about 9:30 AM CST, the DC-10 smoothly took off from the ground and before I knew it, we were crusing at 35,000 feet headed towards Seattle/Tacoma International Airport (Seatac).
The flight went smoothly -- no clouds or anything -- and by 10:00 AM PST, we were coming into apporach over the North Cascades National Park Complex. Since I was in the right side of the plane, I really didn't get a good view of Mt. Rainier, but I did see it poke through one of the windows in the plane. It is completely unbelievable. You can't imagine how HUGE the mountain is. It's very impressive and I couldn't believe I may climb it. However, since I was on the right side of the plane, I did get an awesome view of Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan! It's great when you can actually see the route you're going to climb from the air. It looked completely different than any other picture I have ever seen of the peak. I snapped a few quick pictuers from the plane and got ready for the final apporach into Seatac.
The DC-10 touched down perfectly into a beautiful day in Seattle. By the time I finally retrieved my gear, I arranged a shuttle to take me to the University Inn in Seattle, where Cascade Alpine Guides (CAG) would pick us up the next morning. When I arrived in my room, I got out my list of things to do which invoved calling my parents, my brother and CAG. I learned from CAG that I was to be picked up at 5:45 the next morning from the hotel, so I had to rush about and finish getting a few items.
I had to utilize Public Transprotation to get me to the Seattle REI to pick up a few last minute items. Riding the metro busses is a very interesting experience, and when I was coming back to the hotel, I somehow got let off 22 blocks from my hotel. I decided to walk, which was another very interesting experience. It was a pleasant day, about 80 degrees out and the walk was nice. On the way, a friend of mine who works for Microsoft called and we agreed to meet at the hotel later.
When we met, he showed me the downtown area of Seattle, the supprisingly busy and complex system of highways & interstates in the area, Microsoft's headquarters, and the main offices of Amazon.com, Real Networks, & several other dot coms. We at at a very good italian resturant in Redmond (pasta before climbing is good) and following the very good dinner, I was starting to really feel the jet lag.
It was around 9 PM PST, but to me, it felt like 11. So, I got a ride back to the hotel to go to sleep. Before I turned in, I repacked all my gear, arranged for a wake-up call at 5 AM, and watched a bit of TV. I fell asleep very soon afterwards and was soon dreaming about climbing the North Cascades.
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