Who's up? Europe!

I’m sitting in the lobby of a Holiday Inn in Leesburg (the boring capital of the world) watching the world cup and waiting for a shuttle to the airport. My next adventure? Backpacking through Europe with my high school buddy, Blaine Pellicore. His dad is a pilot so we can score free standby tickets. Sounds like a good gig, but the only catch is that there are 8 different cities we could be flying in to. All we have is a Eurail pass and no plans. The going? Tough. The journey? Indescribable. The blog? Slightly entertaining at best.

Might as well do a little update right now while I can. I’ve been in DC for the past few days as kind of a layover waiting for our standby flights today. Well, that’s a little misleading actually. I’m not in DC, I’m in a little place called Leesburg, Virginia. There is nothing to do here. I’m serious. The Holiday Inn is right next to a freeway, and there aren’t even any sidewalks leading off the premise. I needed to eat, so I had to hike through some bushes and get lost in a suburb before I wound up at a grocery store which is literally on the other side of the highway. It took me about an hour to get to, but you can see it from the entryway to the hotel. Frustrating…

I’ve met a few people here in “DC” too. Blaine and I have utilized the shuttle service here quite a bit (get free rides to the airport (which is a $47 cab ride, which was my “welcome to DC” (not sure if I can do parentheses in parentheses like this))). On our first night we were going to try and get into the city, but there was another guy in the shuttle kind of doing the same thing, only he was being dropped off at a local restaurant for free. Not bad. His name was Paul and we ended up joining him for dinner and a few beers. He worked with a company based in Orange California of all places called “Marcell” or something like that. Small world.

Yesterday I took the long trek into the city. Shuttle to the airport, bus to outskirts of DC, subway to the heart of the city. Took me about 2 hours. Thank you Leesburg. I met this guy on the way named Elvin (but his friends call him “T”). He was there for a business conference and was looking to kill a few hours sightseeing. Coincidentally I was too, and we ended up spending a few hours together. I think he was in his 40s, born in Brazil but had lived in Louisiana most of his life. Interesting guy who seemed to know a bit about DC. Later on I met up with a friend from Chapman who was doing an internship here, Lindsey Clopp!

I’m still in the lobby, waiting for this shuttle. If we don’t catch any of these 8 flights, I’m not sure where we’ll be sleeping tonight… Even if we do catch any of these flights, I’m still not sure where or even if I’ll be sleeping tonight. The whole journey lies ahead, and right now, anything could happen.