Dexter Holland, lead singer of The Offspring, preformed a solo flight in his twin-engine Cessna Citation airplane around the world ending in Los Angeles, California, on November 25, 2004. Here is he journals he wrote during his flight: 11.26.04 - Last Day – Orange County, California. Song of the Day: Home Sweet Home Ever had jet lag? Where your body just feels messed up from flying and because you‘re in a way different time zone than what you‘re used to? Well I had it pretty bad by now. My body didn‘t know if it was morning or night. And on top of that, I had crossed the international date line the night before last when I landed in Alaska. The whole international date line thing is confusing to most people. I know, that concept always throws me too. Basically, everyone knows that if you fly from say, LA to New York, it not only takes five hours or so, but New York is three time zones, or three hours ahead of LA as well. So if you leave LA at 9:00 in the morning, you get into NYC at 5:00 at night. So there‘s 24 time zones in the world, and every time you travel 1,000 miles or so, you‘re in a new time zone. In my case, since I was flying east everyday, I was going ahead in time zones. So imagine, if I left say, Dubai at 9:00 am, flew 3 1/2 hours to Hyderabad, India, they‘re one time zone ahead, so it‘s not 12:30 pm there, it‘s 1:30 pm. Take off again one hour later at 2:30 India time, fly another 3 1/2 hours to Bangkok, and they‘re still another time zone ahead, so it‘s not 6:00 pm, it‘s 7:00. So even if I left early in the morning, it was always night by the time I stopped for the day.So see, every day I‘m losing between two and four hours, depending on how many time zones I‘m flying through. So by the time I got to Tokyo, I was 17 hours ahead of California time. So I‘ve actually lost almost a whole day. So what happens when you hit the 24th time zone? Well that‘s the international date line, and it cuts right in between Russia and Alaska at the Bering Strait. And what happens there is the day resets. So when you pass through the international date line, you do go ahead one hour, but you also go back one day! Confusing, I know. I just think of it as regaining all the hours I lost over the trip. So when I took off from Tokyo that day, it was 12:00 noon Wednesday Tokyo time. I flew for ten hours or so, went through six time zones or so, and crossed the international date line. So the bottom line in all this is that I actually landed at 4:30 am on Wednesday morning! I went back in time. Cool. So yeah, my body clock was pretty seriously messed up by this time, but I didn‘t really even feel tired cause this was the day I‘d be flying home. This last flight from Seattle to John Wayne airport in Orange County was 2 1/2 hours. It was sort of cold and rainy when I left Seattle (no surprise) but as I climbed through the clouds I got a good look at Mt. Rainier, which is quite a mountain. The rest of the flight was a no-brainer. As I got closer to LA the weather kept getting better and better. Southern California was looking really good for November, sunny and about 75 degrees. As I came in towards the airport I could see all the landmarks of SoCal I had left a week before. There was downtown LA, the Queen Mary, the Huntington Pier. They all looked a little different somehow, the way that things seem to change when it‘s really that you‘ve gained a new perspective on those things.All right, enough personal exploration. I landed and it was pretty cool, dude. Where‘s the closest In-n-Out? 11.25.04 - Seattle, WA Day 10 – Seattle, Washington. Song of the day: Sliver (“Grandma take me home”) Well I didn‘t get much sleep in that motel in Nome because US customs tracked me down and called me in the room a few hours later. They said they would appreciate it if I could make my way down to their office down the street. It was about 11:30 am when I walked down there and what struck me about this town as I walked through it was that the sun was barely up. In fact, it looked like it was almost sunset. That‘s what happens in the higher latitudes, you know, during the winter the sun doesn‘t stay out long. But it was really trippy to see it in person. I finally arrived at the post office/US Customs building (small town). All right, so I had to be scolded for not clearing customs last night, yes, yes, I understand, I‘m very sorry, it‘ll never happen again. Actually, the customs agent was a pretty nice guy, just doing his job I guess. He drove me out to the plane to check its documents, and so I finally got to see a little bit of Nome. It‘s a really cool little town. This is the place, I‘m told, where the Iditarod sled dog race finishes every March. I gotta check that out sometime. My new friend Brent was there still and after the customs guy was finished with me I got the plane ready. Brent had a nice 1949 Dodge truck to show me, that he had restored, and it was awesome. When he asked me to sign it, I felt a little bad, messing up his truck and all. I‘ve signed a lot of weird stuff before, but never a vintage truck! I was ready to leave at about 2 pm. I told them I‘d be back for the Iditarod, climbed in and took off for Anchorage. Alaska is really beautiful country to fly over. At this time of year it has a starkness to it but it‘s so expansive that it sort of takes you back, like whoa, this shit is big. The flight to Anchorage was an hour and a half and by the time I landed, the sun was just setting. You know, it‘s the little conveniences of home that make all the difference. When you‘re travelling internationally, you just can‘t get stuff that you take for granted at home. Like, I tried to get peanut butter for the last four days. Good luck! So, when I saw a Subway sandwich shop in Nome, I just about got misty. And now, in Anchorage, my cell phone started working. Things were really looking up. If I could just find a Del Taco or an In-n-Out burger (two of my favorite local places to eat), it would be just like OC. My stop in Anchorage was pretty brief, I got some gas, made a couple calls and was off again. I was now headed to Seattle, Washington. People don‘t realize how far away Alaska really is. Like for this flight, you wouldn‘t think that Anchorage is that far from Seattle, but it‘s like 1500 miles. It‘s about as far as going from LA to Chicago. So this was a pretty long leg. One cool thing about it though, even though a lot of this flight is over Canada, you don‘t have to clear customs in Seattle, cause you take off from the US and you‘re landing in the US. So it was a good flight. The idea of being back in the continental US sounded pretty righteous to me. The descent and landing into Seattle was probably the worst weather of the entire trip. There was icing on the descent, and quite a bit of turbulence. It was the kind of turbulence that every once in awhile lifts you out of your seat and knocks your head against the ceiling. It was also, of course, night by this time, which always adds a little more difficulty to any approach. I was bumping around in the clouds pretty good until right before touchdown, when I broke out and could see the runway. It wasn‘t over yet, though. I went through some pretty strong wind shear on final. Most people who don‘t really fly, I know, are like, ‘Wind shear, I know that‘s bad, but I don‘t really know what it is.‘ Basically, wind shear is where the wind direction and wind strength are changing so suddenly that if you‘re not careful, your plane‘s airspeed can drop so low that you literally fall out of the sky. Again, something I generally avoid. So although I never felt that I was in any serious danger or anything, it kept me paying attention all the way through to landing. When I finally got on the ground, I couldn‘t help but think somehow nature was making me earn it – I couldn‘t just coast back into the US without paying for it! Although I had only been flying for about six hours that day, I was beat. I decided to call my friend Blackball who lives in Seattle and stay for the night. He picked me up and we went to a full on Mexican taqueria for a couple tacos and a beer.Tacos, holy crap, it just keeps on getting better and better. 11.25.04 - Magadan, Russia Day 9 – Russia Song stuck in my head today: Back In The U.S.S.R. Geez. I can‘t believe I started today in Tokyo and I‘m now in Alaska. What a day today‘s been. Where do I start? Well, how about I start with why I‘m in Alaska in the first place. Since I live in Los Angeles, usually you‘d fly from Tokyo straight over the Pacific to California. But again, since I don‘t have a Travolta type plane, I can‘t make it that far. I wouldn‘t even make it to Hawaii. And since I generally avoid open-water, out-of-gas emergency landings, I had to pick a different way to go. So the way to go is up the coast of Russia. You go way north, make a couple stops for gas, and eventually cruise across the Bering Strait to Alaska. So that was my plan. It was gonna be a lot of flying, about ten hours, but I should end the day in Anchorage, Alaska, which sounded way better to me than spending the night in Siberia.So I left Tokyo at about noon, and flew straight up a couple hours and landed in Yuzhno, Russia. Never heard of it? Me neither. In fact, it looked sort of like a lot of people forgot about it. It was cold and windy, and pretty desolate looking. It was pretty strange. I was met by some very serious-looking Russians who wanted to see my papers. I felt like I had landed in 1970‘s communist Russia. I‘m not sure that anyone told these people that the Soviet Union ended! I was led into a very bureaucratic-looking stone building and taken to passport control. After satisfying that guy, they took me to a navigation room where I had to satisfy another guy that I understood the departure procedure. Then I was led into yet another room where I was given a lecture on the current weather. Get the picture? It almost felt like an interrogation. It was like ultimate bureaucracy, the way you‘d picture cold war USSR. They weren‘t mean or threatening or anything, I don‘t want to give the wrong impression. But it made me realize that I was in a very different part of the world, and I wanted to get out of there. They finally let me leave, and I flew north again, this time to Magadan, Russia. Never heard of that one either? Exactly. And these are the big cities on the east coast of Russia! I could tell by now that this was a very rough part of the world, weather-wise. There was just a different look to it. The land below looked stark and cold. The sun hung lower in the sky than at lower latitudes, making everything seem darker. This was definitely not the kind of place where you‘d find a Club Med. Even though I had left only a few hours earlier, the sun was setting now and night was coming on. I was also going to be over the water for the next couple of hours, over a large gulf called the Sea of Okhotsk, which is about the size of the Gulf of Mexico. It was starting to feel a little weird. As I got close to Magadan and descended, I could see the ground by what light the moon gave off. It was all white mountains. I could see icebergs. I felt like I was landing at the north pole! It looked pretty cold, but I had no idea. They told me as I was coming in that the temperature on the ground was negative 29 C. That‘s negative 15 F. Which is about 30 degrees colder than anything I‘ve ever been in. Now I know to some of you guys in Scandinavia, maybe that‘s not a big deal, but I couldn‘t believe it. And let me tell you, it‘s a whole different kind of cold. It‘s the kind of cold that kicks your ass as soon as you step out of the plane. The kind of cold that makes you say ‘mommy.‘ I landed and taxied over to where they wanted me. When I opened the door there were, again, some very serious-looking Russians. It was totally like you would picture it. They had the full on long green wool coats and the big grey Ushanka hats. You could see their breath in the frozen night air. There was an interpreter there because none of them spoke English. They asked if they could board the plane to do the paperwork, since it was so cold outside. With the door open on the plane, it wasn‘t that warm in there either, but I brought them on. This was probably the most surreal moment of the trip. Can you picture it: I was alone, in Siberia in the middle of the night, huddled inside my freezing plane surrounded by Russians in military uniforms. They spoke Russian to each other and I realized that I was pretty vulnerable right at that moment. For all I knew, they could have been saying, ‘Let‘s jack this guy! Who wants the plane?‘ While the Russian discussion was going on, the fuel truck pulled up. It looked like it had been around since the Korean War. They filled the tanks and told me to come outside and check the tanks myself to make sure it had been fueled properly. Look at that, cover-your-ass-so-we-don‘t-get-in trouble mentality just like in the US! Maybe they weren‘t so different after all. I wanted to make sure that they put the right fuel in, you know, jet fuel as opposed to avgas or who knows what else you get in Siberia. Sometimes they call it jet, or jet-A, or jet A-1 fuel. When I asked, ‘what kind of fuel is this? Is this jet-A?‘, they responded, ‘Oh, we put in 1800 liters‘. Jesus. They think I asked them how much they put in! They even showed me the gauge. Yep, 1800 liters all right. Whatever, I don‘t care about that, I can see the tanks are full, what kind of fuel is it, I asked again? Through the guy‘s visible breath I heard him say, ‘TC-1‘, and point to a sign on the ancient truck. It indeed said that the truck carried TC-1 fuel. Whatever the hell that was. Was it the equivalent? It‘s gotta be, I‘m sure, but I don‘t want to take off to find out. So how does that old saying go? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck. So I had to just examine the fuel. It looks like jet fuel (clear), smells like jet fuel (kerosene), and feels like jet fuel (slimy). Okay, I‘m sure it‘ll be fine. I guess I would find out pretty quick, and I could always turn around and land if I had a problem. Turns out the fuel was fine but on to the next problem… I had to check in with the people in Houston that were helping me with the trip planning. This company is called Universal, and they did a great job for me on this trip. They helped me figure out the route, filed the flight plans, and helped get permits for all the countries that I had to land in. You even have to have permits for countries you‘re just going to fly over. So they‘ve been great, I couldn‘t have done this trip without them. So I checked in with Houston, on a satellite phone (great, gotta stand outside to get signal!), about my next leg to Anadyr, Russia. Uh oh, Houston, we have a problem. It turns out that the Anadyr airport is closing, it won‘t be open when I get there. Well, I guess I could stay in Magadan for the night, but at this point, I‘d probably rather stay in Fallujah overnight than here. Is there anywhere else we can go?, I asked. They plugged some numbers into their computer and decided that I could make it from Magadan all the way to Nome, Alaska instead. Nome is like right on the coast of Alaska, the first place you‘d run into. I‘d have to stop there and then go on to Anchorage, but jeez, that‘s fine. Get me out of here! With that taken care of and my extremities going numb, I climbed back onto the plane. The KGB was finishing up, and I could tell they probably didn‘t want to be out in this weather anymore than I did. They handed me a flight plan and told me I needed to be off in ten minutes or that flight plan would expire. Hey, cool. No arguments here. I started up and taxied down the long, cold, rough runway as quickly as I could. I was cleared for takeoff and as I climbed out, I looked back down over this wild place. A few lights. Houses covered with snow and ice. The kind of cold you can just see. You can feel it just by looking at it. Friggin‘ Arctic. Dude, I was glad to get out of Magadan. To be continued. 11.25.04 - Nome, AK Day 9 – Russia (continued) I climbed out after takeoff and the city got smaller and smaller behind me. On the one hand, I was pretty happy to be leaving Magadan behind. On the other hand, this next leg had me a little uneasy. I was now going further north, up the coast of Russia, for about three hours, before turning and heading across the Bering Strait to the coast of Alaska. Definitely not a good part of the world to be in if you get a mechanical problem. Also, by this time it was probably midnight and it was looking pretty cold and dark out there, except for the moon. On top of that, in this part of Russia there weren‘t any airports until the Bering Strait to land if you had to. Hell, there weren‘t even any cities between here and Nome! The only contact I had was a Russian air traffic controller on the radio. He couldn‘t see me on his radar because I was beyond his range, but I was to call him and check in every hour or so. Even on the radio, there was only one other airplane around, an Air China flight. I was probably the only guy around for 500 miles or so. I was really gonna be on my own for the next few hours.This one was a pretty lonely flight. I was counting down the miles to the US border, which was over the Bering Strait. It was 1500 miles altogether. Then 1400. Then 1300. You get the picture. When I finally got to the point of less than 1000 miles to go, that was quite a moment. It made me think, though. When you‘re over Russia and you‘re stoked because you‘re finally only 1000 miles from Alaska, you‘re really out in the middle of nowhere. Well, when I finally crossed the Bering Strait and got back into American airspace, it was pretty stokeable. I called the guy at Anchorage control on the radio, and, being so relieved, I told him how good it was to be back in American airspace. Of course, this poor guy was on the night shift. This was just his job. He couldn‘t care less. So he ignored me. No ‘Welcome back, brother!‘ No ‘Glad to have you back in the fold.‘ No love whatsoever. Just like the US I left! Awesome. I got close to the Nome airport and started getting ready to land. It was 4:30 in the morning there, 34 degrees F (wow, warm compared to Magadan), and no tower to guide me in. There was supposed to be a fuel truck and customs guy when I landed. I was gonna fuel up, clear customs and make one more short hop to Anchorage. I was on my own to make the landing at Nome. I executed an instrument approach called an ILS for runway 27. Everything was looking great as I came in to land. I hit the runway and stepped on the brakes. Nothing happened! The plane just kept on careening down the runway. See, my plane has brakes that are designed never to lock up. If they feel a skid coming on, they‘ll just release. I thought there was problem with the brakes. I pumped them over and over, and each time they would grab for a split second, then let go. Meanwhile, the red lights at the end of the runway were coming up fast. What I didn‘t realize was that the runway was iced over. The brakes were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. I hadn‘t considered the possibility of ice on the runway, because the temperature was above freezing. Hell, it was like 50 degrees warmer than where I had landed at Magadan and that runway was completely dry! As I came in to land at Nome, you couldn‘t tell that there was ice on the runway. It looked as dry as the last place I had landed. And there was no tower to call and check the runway condition. So I‘m speeding down the runway with almost no brakes, but I can tell that I actually am slowing down little by little. Whether I was going to stop by the end of the runway, I wasn‘t sure. It was pretty sketchy for the next ten seconds or so. My life didn‘t flash before my eyes or anything, but… Eventually I realized that yeah, I was going to stop in time. The plane finally came to a stop with a little runway to spare. Holy crap. I let out a deep breath and checked myself for leaks.This night was not quite over yet! I taxied off the runway, and looked around for the fuel truck and customs guy. There was nobody. I shut down the plane, got out and tried to make a call. My cell phone wasn‘t getting reception, however. I tried a satellite phone I had, but it had gone dead. I wasn‘t going to be able to go on to Anchorage without getting gas. Or clearing customs. In fact, it sort of looked like I was going to be spending the night in the plane. Killer. I got out a sleeping bag and tried to get warm in the back. Luckily for me, the fuel truck and fuel guy showed up about a half hour later. He wasn‘t very happy about it either. I guess he wasn‘t stoked to be outside in the cold in the middle of the night pumping gas. I couldn‘t blame him. I was by now pretty tuckered and I was gonna have to stay in Nome tonight. My gas guy (Brent‘s his name) warmed up a little and got me a taxi to a motel in town. Thanks dude. I knew as I got to the motel that I was gonna be in big trouble with customs in the morning. They don‘t like it when you just come in from Russia, land and leave without telling anybody. And I generally avoid it. But this time I didn‘t really have a choice. I‘d just have to deal with it tomorrow. So wow. Alaska. Epic. 11.24.04 - Tokyo, Japan Day 8 - Tokyo, Japn Song of the day: Holiday in Cambodia Today I took off from Bangkok and went across Southeast Asia. I flew over Laos and Cambodia (inspiration for the song of the day) and right over Da Nang, in Vietnam. That was another weird moment, when they tell you on the radio to ‘contact Ho Chi Minh control.‘ Ho Chi Minh control?! Wow. Just has a funny ring to it, doesn‘t it. I flew over the South China Sea and stopped in Kaohsiung, Taiwan to get gas. This place was in the south of Taiwan, opposite of Taipei. When I got there there were like ten cars there waiting. They all worked at the airport and said they just wanted to have a look at the plane, because they never had small planes land there. Ok, whatever. Then they started taking pictures of it! This must have been a big day for them. Or maybe they just have too much time on their hands down in Kaohsiung. From there I headed up to Tokyo, Japan. If you‘ve never been to Japan, you should check it out. It‘s so different from ‘western‘ countries but in a very cool way. We‘ve toured there lots of times and we always have great shows. I landed at Narita airport, but it was already late so I didn‘t get into the city this time, I just stayed by the airport. Oh well, too bad. Sorry Tokyo. Maybe next time. Just as well, though, tomorrow‘s gonna be a long day. Ever been to Russia? Thanks for checking in. Later. 11.23.04 - Bangkok, Thailand Day 7 Song stuck in my head today: Tehran Today I flew out of the Middle East. My first stop today was Hyderabad, India, but to get there, I had to fly over Iran and Pakistan. There‘s something a little weird about talking to a controller who calls himself ‘Tehran Air Traffic Control‘. I don‘t know, maybe it‘s just me! Anyway, he cleared me to fly over Pakistan. I hung a right at Karachi and as I did I looked down at it and thought about all the unrest that had been happening there. I gotta admit, the city did have sort of an ominous look to it. I was glad not to be landing there. I went on to Hyderabad, which is right in the middle of India, and stopped for gas. I took off again, this time headed for Bangkok, Thailand. To get there, I had to fly for a couple hours over the Indian Ocean. I decided that oceans really look pretty similar. The Indian Ocean sounds sort of exotic, like it would be more blue or something. But not really. Pretty much the same. As I descended into Bangkok, I thought about the show we had played there just a few months ago. It was our first time to play in Bangkok, and the show was really cool. It always trips me out the first time we go somewhere, especially somewhere really far away like Bangkok, where they don‘t speak the language and they have a totally different culture, and yet they come out to the show. They even know all the words, even though they don‘t know English. It‘s pretty awesome. Yeah, my job sucks! 11.22.04 Dubai, UAE Day 6 – Dubai Song of the day: Still rockin‘ the Casbah When I got to Dubai, something became obvious pretty fast: this is not a poor country. It looks like somebody had a pretty nice oil field around. The city looks brand new and very westerniized, meaning there‘s as much KFC chicken in this town as there are lamb skewers! But the Muslim angle here is very obvious as well – all the dudes are wearing the full on white gowns and headgear (called aghals). It definitely feels like a foreign country. I would call Dubai the Las Vegas of the Middle East. The city is very flashy, very touristy, and very expensive. In fact, one resort here is building little islands that make up a replica of the earth! I shit you not, Mel Gibson already bought England. I stayed at one of the nicest places you‘ll find anywhere, called the Burj al Arab. It‘s about 1000 feet tall and shaped like a giant sail. This city is too much, I‘m telling you. In fact, I read that Bill Gates is going to start having Microsoft conventions there, cause he likes the way they‘re handling their IT development. Crazy. So hurry up and get out here, I think you can still buy California! The time difference from my home in Los Angeles is now 12 hours, so I guess that means I‘m officially on the other side of the world. I will tell you more later. 11.21.04 Dubai, UAE Day 5 – Cairo Song stuck in my head today: Rock The Casbah Dude, I should have gotten sponsored! I didn‘t think of it till now, but people making trips are always getting sponsored. I could like, put a big ‘Skoal‘ sticker on the side of my plane, or ‘Cingular Wireless‘ on the tail. Well, maybe not. This trip is full on independent, DIY style. It‘s sort of like a glorified road trip, really. Every morning I get in the plane and go a little farther. The plane is stocked with Doritos and beef jerky, there‘s lots of maps all over, and there‘s clothes and other assorted junk in the back. If I just had a dog hanging its tongue out the window I‘d be all set. So today I was in Cairo, which is of course a Muslim country, and sort of the beginning of my time in the Middle East. To most Americans, the Middle East seems like a scary and dangerous place, and I really wasn‘t sure what to expect. I‘ve certainly seen enough horrible images of bombings and hostages to think twice about coming at all. But I found it to be much less sketchy than I would have thought. To be sure, there were signs of a post-9/11 world. When I took a taxi to the hotel, the hotel rolled a mirror under the car to check for car bombs! And when you walk into a hotel, you have to go through a metal detector just like at an airport. I was never hassled, though, even when the detector went off. Luckily for me, racial profiling probably works in my favor! Just kidding, was that one in bad taste? Anyway, what surprised me is how friendly people were toward me and how they wanted to talk about the world situation. They wanted to stress to me that Islam is a peaceful religion, and the acts of a few extremists do not reflect on their religion as a whole. They pointed out that there are religious zealots in all religions, even Christianity. For example, they said, what about Christian fanatics that bomb abortion clinics – does this make us think that all. Christians are violent or dangerous? Of course not.Believe it or not, some people were even pro-American! I couldn‘t believe it. They talked about the vast amounts of foreign aid the the US gives countries in the Middle East every year, and some even said that they were glad that Saddam is gone! They were also frustrated with the dangerous image that the Middle East has now. They blamed the media for sensationalizing certain events, making it seem like the whole region is like that all the time. I thought that was a really good point. How many times have I watched CNN showing kidnappings, or suicide bombings, or demonstrations in the streets, and thought, this must be how it is everywhere over there all the time? Now, I don‘t want to get into whether we should be in Iraq or not, or whether Bush is bad or not, because it‘s a really divisive and complicated situation. However, I thought it was a very enlightening and educational experience to actually talk to the people that are living it. Overall, Cairo was a mellow, cool place and I‘m glad I stopped there. My flight today took me four hours over Saudi Arabia to a tiny country called United Arab Emirates. I landed in a city called Dubai, and as I flew towards Dubai, I actually flew over the Persian Gulf. Wild. It was night, there were lots of oil patforms in the gulf, and they all had fires burning on them. I gotta admit, being by yourself in a plane over the Persian Gulf at night with the orange glowing fires under you is a creepy experience. It was for me. But hey, that‘s life. I will tell you more tomorrow. 11.20.04 Cairo, Egypt Day 4 - Cairo, Egypt Well, I had a great time in Dublin. Dublin‘s known for being the home of Guinness ale and people swear it‘s the best glass of Guinness you‘ll get anywhere, because it‘s just fresher there. In fact, I think some pubs claim to have a direct pipeline from the Guinness brewery! So I had to stop into a pub and have a pint or two. It would have been rude not to. I have to admit, it was really good. If you‘re ever in the neighborhood (of Dublin) I highly recommend that you stop in and try some. So today I took off from Dublin and flew down through Europe. I passed right over Paris, and gave the city a what‘s up shoutout as I flew by. Over the next hour I rolled over Geneva, Switzerland and most of Italy before landing in Rome for gas. Too bad I wasn‘t staying, Rome is such a cool city. Just don‘t drive when you‘re there. After fueling I took off again, headed for Cairo, Egypt. This flight was really cool, it was night and I was flying straight across the Mediterranean. I took a left at Crete and headed towards Egypt. There‘s something really cool about flying at night over a strange place. It was super dark out, just the wind noise on the plane and tons of stars out. Now they warned me that Cairo was, believe it or not, recently hit by a locust swarm! How Biblical. I was told that I might not be able to land there. Which is just fine with me, as I generally avoid locusts. I guess, though, the swarm passed through or to the side and I was cleared to land. Cairo seems so different from European cities cause it‘s just not a Western city. It feels very cool, though, to be in such a wild and historic city. I will tell you all more later. 11.18.04 Dublin, Ireland Day 2 – Crossing the Atlantic. This morning‘s flight was early and cold but it made for a nice view leaving Goose Bay. Now if you‘ve never heard of Goose Bay, you‘re probably not alone. It‘s a very small town in Newfoundland. It‘s also not a very happening vacation destination. But it‘s a good stop because it‘s on the far eastern coast of Canada, so you gas up there and start heading across the Atlantic. If I had a plane like John Travolta, I could take it nonstop to Europe. But my plane (a Cessna Citation CJ2) is not quite that buff, so I need to find a place to get some gas on the way. So my first stop today was Reykjavik, Iceland. That flight is entirely over the water of the North Atlantic, so I had a lot of time to contemplate that there was a whole lot of nothing around and no place to land if you have a problem! But the flight went great. About halfway through I flew over the tip of Greenland, which was all huge ice and snow-covered mountains. Very cool looking. I had been told that there was an active volcano on Iceland, and I might not be able to land there. Which is just fine with me, as I generally avoid volcanoes. When I got close, though, I was cleared to land. Iceland is a beautiful country and pretty snowy this time of year. After gassing up I took off again, this time for Dublin, Ireland. This flight was also a few hours at night over the North Atlantic, not a real hospitable part of the world. It makes for an exciting flight, though. You start thinking about stuff like whether your affairs are in order! Do I have a will? Not really, it was a cool few hours and a welcome sight to see the coast of Ireland. The city looked super cool coming in at night and it‘s awesome to be in Dublin! 11/17/04 - Goose Bay, Canada Day 1 - Goose Bay, CanadaWell, today‘s the first day of my trip and I‘ve gone from Los Angeles to Goose Bay, Canada. Not a whole lot going on in Goose Bay. Except a whole lot of cold, that is! The temperature here is about 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-10 C for you international types) which is way chilly for my California ass! Goose Bay is a good place to stop for the night because it‘s right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, so it‘s a good jumping off point to ‘cross the pond‘, as they say in pilot-speak. The trip is going great for the first day and crossing the Atlantic tomorrow will definitely be one of the highlights. I‘ll try to check in to keep everyone posted – later.