Have you seen this man?

My trip to Switzerland

Last night I found myself staying in the nicest house I'd ever been in. A lakeside manor in full view of the Matterhorn in the Swiss alps. There was a huge party going on, inside and out was a crowd of my closest friends, Swiss allies, and government personnel. Then I got a call. The US needed me to fly a reconnaissance mission on the Swiss town across the lake. The only problem was, my SR-71 Blackbird I would be flying was also across the lake.

Being the heroic man I am, I jumped into action. Wasting no time at all I bared down to my skivvies and went to swim to my aircraft. Of course, even heroes have moments of weakness, and I was hesitant about swimming across an entire lake alone in the middle of the night. Thankfully, my buddy Doug who was doggy-paddling in the shallows agreed to swim to the opposite shore with me.

Moments later we reached the other side. Imagine my surprise when I found an exact copy of the house I was renting on this side of the lake! I knew my plane would be in the parking lot. But alas, I was still almost naked from my swim. I couldn't fly a plane in my underwear! Thankfully, the housekeeper here was the same as the one who was taking care of the house I was renting, and she let us in. I ran to the washing machine and pulled out a few articles of ruined clothing, socks with holes in them and an unraveled shirt; it wasn't much but it was all I needed. I was ready to fly.

We got to the plane, and although he had no flight experience, we elected Gian to be the pilot. We climbed aboard and started to taxi to the runway- a series of floating docks on the lake. Gian put the craft in motion down the driveway, scraping the wings on surrounding trees.

"Stop scraping it!" we yelled as he straightened out, going down the sloped road.

Then we heard honking. The housekeeper was following us in her SUV, and we were thrown into a panic. Did she want us to stop? To speed up? Was she going to kill us? Gian decided to skip the runway and instead gunned it down the hill, hoping to use the road as a ramp. I knew we didn't have enough speed, hell our main engines weren't even on! We made the jump, and I was sure we were going to fall into the water. We started to drop, descending quickly. Suddenly, not two feet from the water, our engines roared to life. The sound rippled around the canyon.

This startled Gian, and his lack of experience showed. The force slammed us down in our seats, and our helpless plane tumbled in the air like a broken firework. Flips and somersaults brought us back closer to Earth, and we dove nose first into the lake.

Shit.

Gian pressed a button and water spewed out of the cargo bay. We slowly lifted from the depths, hovered in the air and settled down, floating like a graceful swan.

I got another call from the government.

"Haha, maybe we'll start him with something smaller next time."

And everybody laughed.

My trip to Vietnam

To those of you just tuning in, I've been traveling across the world in a series of nightly trips ranging from 4-12 hours each.

Last night I drove to Vietnam in a small BMW hatchback. At first I thought it was a Fiat, but as I pulled into the gas station I remembered that they only have diesel pumps in Vietnam. I filled my tank while talking to a man I was friends with, and in my distracted state some gas squirted out of the car. Oops! 

The total came out to be $1.72- I sure was glad they took American money! I went inside to pay and realized that I wanted some snacks.  I went to the counter and picked out a pack of cheese Ritz crackers, and since they were a dollar each, I figured I could just trade two packs for the price of the gas. Of course, variety is the spice of life, so I sought a pack of peanut butter crackers to even out my trade. Unfortunately, the only peanut butter Ritz crackers I could find came in unzipped zip-lock bags, so I questioned the cashier about it.

"Vietnam doesn't have the recipe for peanut butter, so people bake them and bring them here."

I was convinced. I wanted them despite there being empty and torn peanut butter cracker wrappers on the rack. But as I shuffled through loose refuse and free crackers, I stumbled upon something amazing. Ritz brand "Doreen's Whipped Peanut Butter Crackers". I was elated. I went to pay and
brought up my idea of trading the crackers for gas to the cashier. Strangely, she still insisted on taking my credit card anyway. Oh well.

As I turned around I noticed the line had wound out the door, and everyone was staring at me! I hurried out of the populated store towards my car down the block. Wait, my car was at the pump! I backpeddled to my vehicle with crackers in hand in lessons learned.