I practically walked into the airport and onto my flight from San Jose this morning. The process was much less painful than I had expected. I guess that is one of the benefits of travel originating at one of the major hubs for a carrier with which you hold premium status. I had to connect through DFW, which was a bit of an inconvenience, as I had to traverse a terminal in order to do said connection. I finally arrived at Miami International Airport where I wait for the overnight flight segment to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The plane is finally off the ground from Miami, more than one hour later than it was scheduled to leave. I have to say that I like this American Boeing 777 as they have a monitor in the back of each seat with one of the viewing options being flight information. It seems that they think we will arrive only 30 minutes late even though we took off over an hour late. Actually, watching the flight information shows the ETA is slowly increasing I guess we will have to wait and see what time we actually do arrive.

I am still not as excited about going to SA as I usually am about going to Asia. Hell, I even considered not going to SA but going to SEA again. It was a brief lapse of resolve though as I have always said that I wanted to go to Brazil/SA. I don't know fully what it is but I have identified some items. 1) I am a Cheap Charlie/Barato. The costs in SA are at least twice that of SEA even when doing things conservatively. I was aware of this from the beginning but I guess that I overestimated my tolerance to paying higher prices for what is essentially the same service just packaged differently. The one shining point of the girls that I met in SA is that it was quite easy to set up ?true? manage-a-trois? with them. I don?t want to get into discussions about value for the money, if the SA girls are worth the premium, if the SA girls are more sophisticated, etc. This is just my observation about me. 2) The whole concept of ?needing? to know Spanish to have a good time with the girls when going LongTime is bothersome. Once again comparing it to SEA I had a great time with girls who spoke minimal English. They made to effort to make sure that I was enjoying myself. 3) I have the impression that most of the girls in BsAs and Rio de Janeiro prefer ShortTime. I am more of a LongTime kind of guy and by that I mean that I like to choose a girl, have dinner or a late night meal/snack with her, go back to the room for whatever we decided to do, sleep together, and then hangout the next day until noon or later. It seems that the girls prefer to get in and get out as quickly as possible or at least to be paid for every increment of time they spend with a John. 4) The flights to and from Argentina and Brazil take approximately the same total amount of time as it does for the flights to and from the Philippines or Thailand. Thus for me it?s a wash. I know that some east coast guys like to travel to SA for long weekends (i.e. 4 days). It isn?t feasible/reasonable from my perspective to travel to either SEA or SA if I only have 4 days available. Though I do have to admit that I knew a guy that did actually fly to Bangkok from Seattle on a four-day weekend.

Anyway, time to eat and then catch some sleep before I arrive in Argentina.