Once when Hiro was living at my family's house he and I decided to get a pizza. We were starving, we had a coupon, it was pretty simple, right? Three hours later we're riding in the back of a pickup truck next to a 230 year old dog looking for an AutoZone outlet. Not that it wasn't fun, but a) it wasn't anything close to the simple task we'd set out to do and b) we didn't get any pizza. So, really, I should have expected that a day of driving around Seattle with Hiro would lead to me ending up in a completely different part of the continent.

The thing that I should've remembered about Hiro (and clearly didn't) is that he speaks English so well that I forget that he isn't as fluent as I think he is. When we drove to the airport after checking out the Space Needle I thought he and I were going on some kind of aerial tour of Puget Sound or something. Then an hour later I hear the pilot say something like "We should be in Barrow by 9 pm" and I got a little confused. Hiro thought it would be fun to go to the northernmost point in Alaska, so he bought us tickets. (Which he can do - he's getting paid a lot more at the video game company than I'll be making for the Viva Bread Party)

So I freaked a little and we decided to get off the plane at the first connection in Juneau, rather than proceed to Barrow. Now, most of me thinks this is a really cool sidetrack, and if I'm going to end up in some unusual place by accident, Hiro's the guy to have with me. There are just two slight flaws in this logic: first, my car is parked in the "hourly" lot at Seattle's airport. Second, I didn't bring any luggage - no extra clothes or anything. Ah well. I hope there's a good pizza joint in Juneau.

(Photo by hfabulous)