With my wife's laughter still ringing in my ears, ("Yeah, sure, I'm going to take you to the airport") I called my friend and property partner Bryan to make arrangements to go to LAX. We were so marveling an open freeway and going 75 MPH, we almost missed Century Blvd. Bryan has a bit of a obsession with the ponies ("gambling isn't a problem unless you lose) hence his car instinctively tried to turn east toward Hollywood Park Racetrack instead of west toward LAX. But he fought the good fight and taking a minute to drop off my mail at the LAX postal center, he got me to the Tom Bradley terminal and Taca at 2210 hours, 5 minutes before I was to meet Craig6z.

Craig was characteristically prompt and we circumvented the maddening crowds to the empty first class check in. Weight was a concern for one of the forthcoming small puddle-jumpers in Belize, and we weighed in within a kilo of each other, both of our duffels coming in at 17 kilos.

We terminal hopped over to the RCC to kill some time, but it was nearly 2300 hours and was pretty dead. Back we went to Tom Bradley through the bowels of the airport, as seen in the airport edition of Die Hard with Bruce Willis. We hiked to gate 123. Craig speaks Disneyland Spanish, so he was able to translate the first call for the flight.

I didn't look, but Craig reported that coach was 2/3 full. Interestingly, we were the only people in first class, leaving 10 un-bagged FC seats. Surprising that nobody was able to push status of any kind and move up. Even a LatinPass card should have done the trick.

Speaking of LatinPass, I remember Taca business seats as quite comfortable, but these (AirBus-A320) were horrible. The angle of the seat, coupled with the symbolic footrest somehow hit all the anti-acupressure points. The beef also did not come up to previous standards, although the torte and cappuccino were quite nice.

Usually I pull an all-nighter before a trip, but this time it was Craig who was sleep deprived. I almost felt guilty elbowing him to tell me that the plane was an airbus.

A short connection in San Salvador where the airport showed minor signs of earthquake damage. A 50-minute flight on an ancient 737-200 got us to BZE.

We will have a day in Belize City before meeting out Backroads group. Looking at the guidebook, I've put not getting robbed on my must do list. Of course, all this hinges on the Radisson actually cleaning the room so that we can get in.