The First Post 2009

This entry is from Sunday August 23, 2009 a little before midnight.

I wanted to post it then but then problems which are discussed in the blog happened. I may post another update tonight that includes the past two days.

So for those of you that don't know, my alias on this blog is Phil McBanus, and this is all about my Japantime put in the context of a fun-blog. So two weeks from now I'm leaving for Japan, or I will have already left a few hours ago, but really by the time I can actually post this entry it will be longer than that. You see apparently the Imperial Place in Las Vegas hasn't heard of complimentary Internet service and wants to charge ridiculous amounts for such a service, but this is not the point.

Right now, in preparation for my long and arduous journey to Japan, I'm taking a long and arduous journey across part of America by car. Along the way I plan to learn about travel, have a few comical mishaps, buy souvenirs for my future Japanese friends, and practice my poor blog writing skilz.

So perhaps I should start with today. I mean I COULD start with tomorrow but since I have trouble perceiving time that way I may not get all the details right and as a species that has been detailed I assume that we prefer to get those things right.

So anyway last night I was up until around abouts 1 in the morning. This morning I woke up at 7. I hadn't been planning to wake up quite that early, even though I set my alarm for that time. You see I normally press the snooze button several times, but this morning was different. Today I (The following information has been censored by the user. Please trust the user that it was quite traumatic and you do not wanna hear about it.) Needless to say after you go through something like that, there's no way you're falling back asleep.

So in the end it wasn't a big deal that I woke up earlier. I ended up having tons of time to get everything I needed (though I of course still forgot stuff), and my uncle David picked me up so I could be ready to leave at noon with my cousin Jared.

Now to make a very long story short that I assume you stopped reading quite some time ago, and if you haven't I worry about your sanity because you were able to endure the insane rants of a semi-crazy person for this long, we ended up not being able to leave until like 3 because Jared took forever packing up his whole life....OH YEAH. So in retrospect I PROBABLY should have mentioned I'm going across the country with my cousin because he's moving to Chicago, but if you knew me, and I don't know why you've read this far if you haven't, you should already know that my cousin is moving to Chicago and I'm also going with to keep him company.

INTERMISSION (even I'm getting tried of all of this craziness, I suggest you take a break at this point, get a snack, watch some guy on youtube hurt himself in an incredibly dumb way and come back to reading this a little later after you feel you can stand me some more)

And we're back from intermission, hopefully. So packed with a car filled with hundreds upon hundreds of pounds, plus Jared's stuff, we left on the road, me as the driver, out to see the country. Of course that was before we thought we were loosing gas at an alarming rate which turned out just to be the air conditioning and us not really paying close enough attention. After that there was lots of driving which I'll also leave out. Following that however, we arrived in Las Vegas, Jared now driving the car, heading to the wrong address, which we quickly realized. It was then I discovered we were somewhat coincidentally spending our first night on this road trip from hell in a Japanese-themed hotel. I did buy some cool gifts.

So before I go several people told me that during my travels, I should keep a reoccurring section in my blog called “Tom! Don't eat that!” where I review food I've eaten. So on this episode of “Tom! Don't eat that!” I went to Burger King. There I had their fries, onion rings, and hamburgers. I'd have to say I'd rate them all pretty low. The fries were typical for fast food fries, greasy and you're not even sure they were made from potatoes. The onion rings were clearly frozen and very greasy. The only time I've had worse is when I buy the frozen ones from the grocery store. The burgers turned out to be too small and ended up costing more than the whopper jr. I mean what the heck is that deal. A smaller burger with less on it costs more? Burger King needs to figure out how to price their times correctly if they really want my business. Bottom line readers, if you're hungry enough, and by science I hope you're not, you can eat at Burger King if you're willing to suffer from poor quality and nonsensical pricing.

Tomorrow we depart on our second longest leg, hopefully to survive to tell the tale.