[Note: This was written at 5:30 PM on Sunday]

I’m finally leaving. Every flight to southern California was cancelled this afternoon because most of the state caught on fire. This is pretty weird considering the very last PDC dream that I had: I was sitting in a plane on the runway when a bunch of blacker than black clouds started flowing into the sky, and our flight was unable to take off. One of life’s funny little coincidences…

So, I’m not flying to LA.

After spending an hour in line, meeting a perfume entrepreneur and the head of Portland State University’s computer science department (someone I had worked with over the phone/online but never met in person), I got to the ticket counter, and I was like all, "I need to go to LA."

The ticket counter rep was all like, "You can’t."

And I was like all, "But I want to."

And she was like all, "Screw you."

And I was all like, "Screw you."

And then she was all up in my face and like, "Go to hell."

And then I was all like, "I can’t – I’m going to be too busy getting to LA without you, you customer service nightmare."

And I was right.

Got my dad on the phone, told him to look up flights to Las Vegas on a few airlines. Found some options, and chose Southwest, as it would put me in Las Vegas around 7:30.

Then, he asked the logical question: "How is this going to get you to LA?"

That’s when I told him to bring up MapQuest and get the driving time between the two cities. Came out to be about four hours, which is perfect.

My plan, then, is to fly into Vegas, a city I’ve never visited, grab a car – preferably a Porsche or something – and then cruise through the desert at a high rate of speed in the general direction of LA.

I’m pumped. I’m actually glad that I’m not going to be getting to LA in the way that I had initially wanted. This is going to be fun…