I set an alarm for 4:18 this morning. I did this so that I could leave my house at five for my early morning flight to Houston. I did leave at five. I needn’t have bothered with the alarm. My body decided that I needed to be awake and alert well before then. This is a normal thing for me when I need to awaken during la madrugada (one of those beautiful Spanish words English lacks for describing the early hours of the morning in a succent manner).

The security line this morning was the busiest I’ve ever seen at my home airport. Mind you, I still got through in under ten minutes, but that would not have been the case if I had wished to check a bag this morning as those lines were much longer. I don’t take the early flights as often as I once did. I even accepted an overnight layover on my big summer trip instead of needing to leave for an airport before sunrise. But it was needed this time given the event timing and the constraints of reimbursement policies.

I continued my kick of listening to historical travelogue/adventure log audiobooks on flights this morning by starting a new one on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. From the description, it is one of those revisionist histories that has been so popular in recent decades that purports to tell a new version of the story. It’s too early to know how well the author will succeed, but my lack of preparation led to a quick scramble to download something before takeoff and that was the most interesting item at the ready in my feed. That’s on me; it’s not like I wasn’t aware of this trip weeks ago. At least it was more upbeat listening than the Hemingway short stories on my last flight that consistently ended in death.