Left at 5am this morning for the airport. Once in the airport, I recognized “the Miz” of WWE (and earlier Real World) fame at the bookstore. (Which is worse, that I recognized him from the MTV show or from his WWE persona?)

The flight to Seattle was long, but the flight to Beijing will be twice that. Once in Seattle I had a 3 1/2 hour layover but I went to find my gate right away to get a seat assignment. (Aisle seat – Yay!) Now power charger for the laptop – that’s business class only and Fencing.Net is frugal and would only pay for a coach/economy ticket.

They either noticed my Olympic Press Credential or liked my glasses, because I got a ticket into Hainan Airlines’ “Club Room”. It’s a nice little lounge with free coffee, tea, snacks and noodles. No airline provided wi-fi however – that’s all done by AT&T. Lucky for me, I still have my DSL line active, but since that’s all in the router I didn’t remember what username BellSouth had assigned me.

Called AT&T to get my wifi access. The customer service rep was great and stayed on the line while we waited for the connection to go through. (So another benefit of keeping DSL, though WayPort’s login was WAY slow.)

I’ve got my connection up, Skype tested and ready to video call with the family while in Beijing.