The 777 jolted and swooped, dropping through the night. It hammered into some invisible pressure fluctuation, and jolted me out of a vague state of half-sleep. Somewhere over the wide flung arms of a vast Western Pacific super typhoon, my first sight was Christophe...

    We'd had a glorious summer here in Northwest Oregon. I know this, because my normally pasty rain-kissed hide is still bronzed enough that I wouldn't look like a vampire in Southern California. Okay, I'll admit that due to work and vacation, I did miss a lot of the...