Asian Seamonkey, with a side of Michigan

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Okay, so let's try this.

Since all the social media sites are blocked behind the Great Chinese Firewall, I pulled out this old site that I intended to use at one point, then didn't. It seems like it's going to work alright, but you guys let me know if things are showing up, pictures are publishing, etc. Assuming it works, I'll be using this primarily to write about the coming month, and using flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/seamonkey78704) to publish most photos.

Currently I am sitting in a restaurant in the Detroit airport, with around three and a half hours until I get on the plane to Shanghai. It turns out that between the time change to East coast time, and my thinking the flight was at 5:30 instead of 4:30, the layover isn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. The trick will be flying for 14 hours, getting there in the evening, and trying to go to sleep so I can get up the next day and be productive. If I'm smart, I just won't sleep on the plane, but 14 hours is a lot of time to kill... I can do work on the computer - I worked on creating the Chinese subtitles for some of the video clips on the way from Austin to Detroit, and I've got Mark Twain and Walt Whitman to read (Roughing It is one of the best travel memoirs of all time, so that's what I brought, hoping some of Mr. Clemens' wit and observational skills will rub off on me), but that's a lot of time to kill without being able to run around, go swimming, or get them to let me fly the plane.

Up until today, I actually wasn't that excited about this trip. I'm not entirely sure why, and I'm still feeling a little ambivalent. I've made some cool new friends in Austin the past couple weeks, and there is a certain part of me that hates leaving when neat things are happening there, but it's been two years since my last good trip (Costa Rica in 2009 - I did lots of traveling last year, especially road trips, but they definitely weren't for pleasure) and this morning, as my robot friend Cindy was dropping me at the airport before daylight, I realized that I am more than ready for a good adventure. So here we go... halfway around the world - literally - to see what we can see. Next time you hear from me, it will hopefully be from Shanghai!

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Photos

Detroit Airport Walkway
the sound and light installation that gets you to concourse A in Detroit.