Well, here I am. I've been up for more than 3 hours now. I am sitting in seat 21F on an Airbus A320 which is United Flight 101 from Chicago to Los Angeles, a 4 hour and 14 minute flight for 1,750 miles. I've got to tell you, I never thought I'd be doing this, but I'm feeling good about this. Why am I here? It's because of my Uncle Frank.

He died over a week ago. He and his wife Mary moved away from Chicago years ago, first to Brownsville, Texas and then out to California to be near my aunt's family.He's the last of my mom's sibling's to go. My mom has been a bit down about this, as she is now "all alone". I'm not doing anything lately (being unemployed) and my mom - who didn't feel like flying - asked if I would "represent us" at the memorial service. I love traveling, I love flying. So, mom's paying for the trip and here I am somewhere over the midwest eating a Michael Angelo's Egg, Ham & Cheese Panini and watching Bruce Almighty.

Uncle Frank and Aunt Mary (or Babe and May as others call them) hold an unusual spot in my heart. Back in 1967, Aunt Mary took me and her nephew Mark to Los Angeles on a train trip. What a great thing to do, showing a kid America from a Santa Fe El Capitan train. I don't remember why Uncle Frank wasn't with us, but he was with us when we flew to LA in 1969. I only have one picture of him in my old photos - it's him on the pier in Santa Monica.

He was a great guy with kids. A tall man with a deep, booming voice that always drank Pepsi out of a bottle. And here, years later, I find a few more odd parallels with my life - he and Mary never had kids, like Carol & I. He proposed to Mary the first week he met her. So did I with Carol.

You see, I had to go to Los Angeles.