Leaving Home

Every few years, my family likes to a summer trip, usually a road trip. We typically drive state to state seeing new places and people. As I'm getting older and leaving the house next year, my parents suggested to us that we could see family in Germany and tour Europe a little bit, as our final family vacation. We all readily agreed to the offer and planned out our route. As of right now, I still have no idea where we are going so it'll a surprise.

As I'm writing this, I'm in Iceland so I'm going to back it up to the beginning of this trip. I was rudely woken up by my alarm clock at 5:15 a.m. on Thursday. I proceeded to get dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, a waffle shirt, and an athletic jacket over all of that, making me feel like an overstuffed pillow case.

For each person, we have a maximum weight limit of 11 pounds for each carry on bag, the only bag that we will have for ourselves this entire trip. I'm still not sure how I feel about that as a little bit more weight would've been nice. But that's what siblings are for! I used the spare space and weight they had left and used it myself, so technically my siblings Zach and Sam have nine pounds and I have 15.

My backpack is a military style backpack, with little nylon strip things sewn onto it. I bought it specifically for this reason because I wanted to buy a pin or a keychain in every place we stopped in.

Around 5:30 a.m. We left for the airport. Our flight was leaving at 8:38 and we needed to be there early. We arrived at the airport around 6:30 and went through TSA, and arrived at our gate at about 7-7:30. This gave me some time to go look around for a souvenir. So, I found the nearest gift shop where I spotted a keychain with all the things Utah is known for: the Salt Lake Temple, skis, the mountains, and the words “Salt Lake.” As soon as I saw it, I needed to have it. I walked up to the cashier, she rings me up and I saw the price for this thing and I almost died. But, I closed my eyes and swiped my card anyway.

I walked back to my gate when I was welcomed with McDonald's. Since I'm the only one in my family that eats McDonald's other than the airport, I had 3 sandwiches because my family didn't want them. I could feel my heart pumping pure hash browns and orange juice but I don't regret my decision.

We finally boarded our flight to California where I was able to take a quick nap. We touched down an hour and a half later. The LAX airport is huge. It feels like a mix between a zoo and the movie Labyrinth. Through a few tense moments, and some Panda Express, we were able to find our gate. Everybody was exhausted at this point, and we had one hour kill while waiting for our flight. My siblings took advantage of this and used our bags as pillows and blankets to catch a few minute of sleep.

Here I was able to find another keychain, a California republic flag that was 2 dollars, a way better deal than my previous purchase.

Our name was finally called to board the flight to Iceland via WOW airlines and I have to say, wow (pun intended). I've never seen more purple in a vehicle in my life.

We got situated in our seats where I fell asleep immediately. I was out for about 2 hours of the 10 hour flight when I woke up and noticed my headphones were broken. It bothered me a little at the time because I couldn't listen to music on the flight anymore which I really wish I had. I haven't really missed them since then.