Fire Flies

Flew to Toronto on Sunday. I'm here for two weeks while Maxwell rehearses for the next leg of his tour. More on that in later blogs. This blog is all about the journey here. Pictures and all.

Getting to Toronto. Sounds pretty easy, get on a plane, get off a plane, answer all the questions right at the customs desk and off you go. Leave it to me to make it difficult.

I've been touring a long time. In that time, I've learned a few ins and outs about the business. One of those is to request a specific airlines to fly. That way I can accrue all my miles in one place. The airline I chose is Continental. Why? They still serve food and the drinks are free. And as an "elite member", priority boarding, priority wait list for upgrades, blah blah blah. When I first contacted the production manager for this tour, I told him that I prefer Continental, and he said no problem. When I finally got my flight information, they had booked me on United! I inquired if there was a breakdown in communication about my Continental desires, and the problem was resolved.

Of course, it was resolved to late for the "automatic" upgrade to first class, I had to wait until I boarded the plane to see if the upgrade went through.

Now on to some pictures...
Let's play, "Guess which one's the roadie". Yep, the dude on the right, not the woman on the left. He was on my flight. I saw him walk up and immediately knew he was a roadie. I thought he was coming on tour with me, but when I changed planes in Cleveland, he wasn't there. Granted, he could have just been some dude who looked like a roadie, upon closer inspection, I noted that he was wearing an SSE Hire shirt. SSE is a sound company in England.
As we took off from LAX we banked right and for the first time ever, flew over Altadena and Pasadena. Yep, that's my house. Didn't have my new fancy pants camera, so I couldn't zoom in on my house. Picture was taken with my new phone camera (new phone, another blog). If you blow up the picture, you can see on the mountains on the upper right corner of the picture where the Station fire burned. The parts that are grey and white, burned, the brown and green was spared. Pretty close to the house I'd say.

For those who didn't know, the house Nicole, Sean Patrick, and I live in , was threatened by the Station wild fire that is still burning in L.A.. The fire is another blog I should write, but alas, I left on tour and left all the pictures and video I took of the fire from our street at home. So, that blog will come in sometime in October, when I return from this little tour...
The highlight of the flight was flying over the active part of the fire. It's well into the mountains, away from home and structures. Even from 20,000 feet in the air, you could make out towers of flames. It was pretty amazing to see the fire line coursing across the mountainside.
Lots of smoke still in the air. You can see a single plume of smoke in the distance.

After the fires passed into the distance, I started flipping through the SkyMall magazine. For those who've never flown or see it, it's basically a catalogue of crap you'd never buy unless you were trapped in a flying tube, missing your house and thinking, "Man, I need a ceramic Sumo guy for my non-existent garden." This however was the best thing I found listed. Well, at least the most humorous.
That's right, a shirt pocket underwater camcorder. Because we are always swimming with shirts on, and especially one with a pocket. And while I'm swimming, I'll be glad to know, I've got a camcorder that fits in there, that I can video my grand children floating in the pool.

By the way, I was upgraded to first class, when I went to board the plane, the computer tweeted at me and the attendant gave me a new boarding pass. First class, window seat. I prefer aisle, but I'm not complaining. Besides, they still serve free drinks and large meals in first class...
Yep, a burger in first class. YUM.

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