I MADE IT! And the plane didn't spontaneously explode and plummet a million miles from the sky. It sure as hell looked that high. Gawd, eighteen hours in the air...NEVER. AGAIN. I can still feel every lurch and turn the plane made, especially since the last flight had to do a lot of them before we landed (was getting reports of windshear up to 25; they can only be allowed to land with anything less than 15).

Speaking of the last flight, DETROIT WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH YOUR AIRPORT? I was only given an hour to catch my next flight to Tampa. I don't think waiting for my luggage to unload, going through customs and baggage checks and rechecking my shits in the next flight AND getting to the damn gate would allow for that. Originally, I thought it left at 5 or sumfin, since it took so much time going through all that. Then I looked at the monitors that showed the gates and leaving times and saw it was at 3 and was like, "OHFUCKINSHITITI'MLATE" and just hightailed it to the floor with the gates. Here's the funny thing- from where I came out, I was at gate one. My gate was 73. Which was practically at the opposite end of the airport. Those were a damn lot of gates to pass, not to mention the loads of shops and wide bathrooms in-between. And all through the time I was running (well, it was more of a speedwalk than anything, but you get the idea) I was cursing "Jesus Christ how the hell am I getting out of here?" cause I honestly wasn't expecting to make it.

But Jesus was pretty good to me that day- my seatmate just happened to be one of the pilots on his way home; he kept the plane down till I got there, and they were pretty much just waiting for me. Awful nice of him (TAD LOVES YOU MAN). >.<;

So, here I am in country outback-looking Tampa. My uncle's got Wi-Fi (TAD LOVES YOU, TOO. <3) so I'm good for a while. My cousins, whom I haven't seen since they were practically babies, were pretty accommodating as well. Good thing...I just felt like a bedraggled mess and really didn't want to be dealing with everyone until I had a shower and a good night's rest. Still not sleepy...think I'll type a bit s'more for a while.

Y HALO THAR U.S.A. NICE TO MEET YOU AGAIN. <3

~Taddle

EDIT: Ohyeah! Forgot to add- stopped over in Japan, too. Japanese attendants have the cutest english-speaking voices. I could make fun of them all day. XD Their toilets though...damn. They lok a little something like this: [link] I was staring at this hole in the ground and wondering...how the hell do the women use that thing? Do they have to strip off all their lower garments? How are they supposed to shit? ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO?! DDDD= ...Fortunately, they had perfectly normal toilets on the other side, so I didn't need to find out the hard way (phew!)