HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning.

My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition. Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been nine after Seattle's. Montreal, Osaka, Seville, Hanover, Aichi (Japan), Shanghai, Milan, and Dubai. Went to all of them, except for Dubai. But only because the pandemic got in the way. Ironically, spent some time in Dubai just before and after their Expo. There are also special expos and I've been to five of those. Next Spring we go to the Osaka Expo.

Much of what was there still stands today, from the Space Needle to the monorail. President John F. Kennedy was supposed to attend the closing ceremony on 21October1962, but could not because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This Expo was the setting for Elvis' movie, It Happened at the World's Fair. Rotten Tomatoes: 25/56. The Expo made a profit.

At one time, one of my books to come was entitled, Six Hours to Seattle. Had to do with part of the Big Island falling into the sea just as my plane flight departed. A mega-tsunami was thus headed for Seattle, with my flight tagging along. So happens that a modern commercial airliner flies at the same speed as a tsunami. So, anyway, to gain material for this book, six years ago I flew to Seattle. A great white shark greeted me.

Well, we depart on Hawaiian Airlines from Honolulu to Seattle at 1:25PM this afternoon. See you in the Emerald (or Queen or Jet or Rain) City tomorrow.

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