It’s 6:40 a.m. am I’m pretty sure I’m not in Kansas anymore (if I were in Kansas, it would be 11:40 in the evening). Actually I’m in Frankfurt, Germany where I’ll be for the next 7+ hours until I board the final leg of my flight to Baku, Azerbaijan. One thing that I’ve already noticed, and didn’t expect, has been the presence of cigarette smoke in the terminal. I’ve become so accustomed to U.S. rules against smoking in public buildings that I’ve come to take smoke-free air for granted.

Thus far the trip’s been pretty uneventful. My first trip ever across the ocean occurred in the dead of night so I’m going to have to take the word of the airline that we were actually flying over water and not the prairies back home. The flight left Chicago at 3:10 p.m. and the sun had set before we crossed the shoreline somewhere around Toronto. I was flying on Lufthansa and would highly recommend them, based on the service that I experienced on this trip.

Although I haven’t met up with anyone else going to Baku, I did meet a nice couple from Iowa on the plane. As soon as they heard where I was going they began talking about Dan Gable. Not a bad figurehead to start the conversation with, even if you’re not from Iowa …

Although I’ve been on my own to this point, I am supposed to meet up with several others for the final leg: Craig Sesker (Media), Travis Shives (Media), Bernie Feldman (FILA assigned Medical), Tom Clark (official), Dave Errett (official) and Zach Errett (official).

Surprisingly, it does not seem that the Frankfurt airport has wireless available to the public. I have seen several Internet kiosks, so I suppose that they don’t offer wireless to avoid undercutting the fees they get from those machines. So I decided that I would type up my thoughts at this time and wait until I get to Baku to post them. Hopefully I’ll have better luck getting connected there!

Note:
It's now 9:20 a.m. and I tried to connect to a wireless server again. I think I just agreed to pay 2 Euros for 15 minutes of connection, but the site was entirely in German so my credit card bill may have some surprises this month!