I had a flight at 0600 from Reagan National to Atlanta.

I forgot to tell you this: I ate something on Thursday which disagreed me with me. Pretty assiduously disagreed with me. To the point that I had awakened at 1:30 feeling � unwell.

As Peter O'Toole said in My Favorite Year to his keeper, Benjy Stone: "Ladies are unwell, Stone. Gentlemen vomit."

I was unwell several times during the night to the point that Titus the Granddog, prior to going out for his walk at 4:30, gave up and went downstairs to sleep in the den. Man's best friend, indeed.

So, I had only had about 90 minutes of sleep when I got to DCA for my flight to Atlanta. Remember, I was booked in coach, my stomach was roiling, and I was plotting where best to sit when I got to the gate area (having gone thorough security with no unwellness having happened) it was clear that the flight was going to be full and my ticket was for a window seat about a third of the way back.

Very. Very. Dangerous.

I glanced up at the TV screen and noticed that I was number one for an upgrade. I sat quietly and tried not to wish too hard for at least one person who was supposed to be in first class to oversleep.

One did.

Now the issue was: Window or aisle. The Unwell Gods continued to smile on me and the person was in 2B; so I got a boarding pass for the aisle seat in the second row on the left-hand side of the cabin in � first class.

We had gotten to the point in the flight where we could use electronic devices but the seatbelt sign was still on when the Unwell Gods said they had been nice to me long enough, thank you, and I made a dash for the forward lavatory.

I whisked past the flight attendant who tried to tell me the seat belt sign was still on by mouthing the words "sick to my stomach" and pointing at my stomach in case she thought I was talking about the stomach in my elbow.

She waved me toward the lav and I � made it.

I was feeling so crummy by the time we landed in Atlanta I was tempted to just go back home and call off the whole trip.

I didn't for two reasons.

One, and the less important, is that the speech in Alaska is a paid speech at full retail rates ($5,000 plus expenses is the answer to that question). The more important was because I had promised to put in an appearance at the wedding of a guy named Mike Gilroy with whom I had served in Iraq and who has remained a friend since.

I wasn't going to be able to stay for the actual wedding because I had to wend my way north, but I was going to be there for a family dinner on Friday night and so I decided to, as Winston Churchill might have said, bugger on.

I was already in first class for the long leg between Atlanta and Sacramento so I got on, got two blankets out of the overhead (pillows are no longer offered on airplanes) to put behind my back, and tried to not be unwell.

I had one small bottle of water and one diet Coke during the five hour trip during which I slept for about two.

Because of the time change, we left at 8:50 Eastern and arrived at about 10:50 Pacific.

I was exhausted, but realized I was feeling better. So much so, that when I got to my hotel in Sonoma at about 12:30 and was told check-in was not until 4 pm, I didn't do my act which has caused both the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices and The Lad to file for divorce.

I calmly said to the desk clerk that I understood that was the rule, but that I had been up for many, many hours and they were going to have an unshaven, bald, 60-year-old man sleeping on one of the very excellent couches in their beautiful lobby if I had to wait until four, so if there was anything - a cot in a hut - which became available, I would be ever so grateful.

Twelve-and-a-half minutes later I was being led to my room.

You catch more flies with vinegar � no, wait, that's not right, is it?

I fell asleep and awoke at about five.

All this, remember, is Friday and the wedding I was there for was not until four o'clock Saturday. The bride and groom already knew I wasn't staying for the actual ceremony, as previously planned, I called Mike and told him I was in the correct time zone and asked if we could meet for a glass of wine (I optimistically thought I would feel well enough for wine) that evening.

He said he'd call me back once he had his instructions. I knew I had about an hour's drive, so at about six I began driving toward Calistoga listening to a book on tape - the new Robert B. Parker novel, Spare Change which has as it's main character a private detective named Sunny Randall. That is to say, it is not a Spencer novel.

I was about 45 minutes into the trip when Gilroy called and said to meet at a Mexican restaurant just at the edge of town, right on the main drag. He said they would be there at seven but, given the drive time, whenever I got there would be fine.

I said I was about 10 minutes out of town because I'd begun driving when we talked before. He said something about that didn't surprise him.

We had a lovely dinner with his and his fianc�e's friends and family and I headed back (three diet cokes but no wine, sangria, or margarita's later) and went back to sleep.

The next morning, I got up and out heading toward San Rafael to have lunch with my high-school girlfriend, Marcia Meyers and her husband Bob.

SIDEBAR:

I think I have written about Marcia before - maybe during the 42nd Reunion Travelogue � let me check. Nope, I didn't but I should have.

For those of you who have been through reunions, you might find the three-parter from my 42nd reunion amusing:

High School Reunion Part 1
High School Reunion Part 2
High School Reunion Part 3

Anyway, when I say Marcia was my high school girlfriend that is overstating the case just a little. Marcia was my girlfriend by virtue of the fact that she was my only date in high school. Note, we didn't "date." She was my only date. Once.

It was the time of our senior prom and I, well, didn't have a date. Marcia didn't have a date, either, not because she couldn't get one, but because she was going out with a guy a year older and he was at college and couldn't come home.

So, Marcia needed, in essence, a beard and my friends decided I was it. They made me call her and asked her if she had a date for the prom.

In that way that pretty, New Jersey high school girls have of putting people at ease, she said: "You know I don't."

So, we went to the prom and we have been friends ever since.

END SIDEBAR

San Rafael is in Marin County, outside of San Francisco. I had a 4:15 flight from SFO to Salt Lake City, so I wanted to have lunch and hit the road.

I called Marcia and told her I was headed her way, but would stop in Tiburon and visit the shops there. She said she was going to cook lunch which I said was silly and we decided on a restaurant.

She and Bob and I had a terrific visit but nothing much happened (I had a bowl of non-spicy gazpacho and some hummus with pita bread) except for the fact that Marcia sang the lyrics to the old Johnny Horton tune (for which this Travelogue is named), "North to Alaska" which was written by Dwight Yoakam.

She sang the chorus as:

      North to Alaska;
      (go) north, the rush is on.

There is a whole body of work documenting mis-heard/mis-sung lyrics which are known as "mondagreens." It seems that there is an Olde Englishe Ballade about some medieval guy who dies which ends with the phrase, "and laid him on the green."

This was misheard by, according to Wikipedia, "the American writer Sylvia Wright" who recounted the ballad in a 1954 Harper's Weekly essay except she had always thought the lyric was not "and laid him on the green" but "and Lady Mondagreen."

Hence the word.

My favorite mondagreen is in the chorus to the Creedence Clearwater Revival song, "Bad Moon Rising" which includes the phrase "There's a bad moon on the rise."

This was misheard by someone as "There's a bathroom on the right" which you will now sing to yourself every time you hear John Fogerty belt it out.

Anyway, when Marcia sang "� North, the rush is on," I giggled to myself because I knew from having listened to that song for fifty years that the lyric was "� North, to Russia's own."

I was wrong.

Next: TSA issues at Anchorage.