The Weatherford Hotel was a throwback to the days when Flagstaff was a thriving frontier town, complete with a hitching post.   The clerk behind the desk was great he offered us food and drink while we waited for the next train out of Flagstaff heading west toward Los Angeles.  As the snow gently fell we moseyed down to the train station, Flagstaff was beautiful the Christmas decorations were still up and with a fresh blanket of snow, covering a winters worth of grime, and it was pristine.
   Once again the rhythm of the rails worked their magic as both Mike and I fell asleep within minutes of pulling out of Flagstaff.   As my eyes opened, the first thing that I noticed was, everyone else dressed in shorts, and tee shirts.  I felt like a time traveler, less than 30 hours ago we were hiking down a desolate highway in a blizzard, and now we were surrounded by sunglass wearing, scantily clad people, lots of people.  
  The first order of business was to remove about four layers of clothes.  According to my friend all we had to do was take a bus from the Los Angeles Union Train Station, to his house in Orange City.  The “short“ bus ride took about an hour and a half, but the ride was seemingly much shorter because we were all entertained by a gentleman who sang the entire rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar”.  Actually he was pretty good. 
   That night Ted, my friend from high school, who worked at an Air Force base, had a party in honor of our visit.  Ted joined the Marines shortly after graduating from St. Albert; he seemed to enjoy his assignment here in southern California.   Teds’ house was very nice, I was surprised to see a beautiful fire place in his living room.  With the temps being in the 70’s I was pleasantly comfortable but for the native southern Californians’ it was cold and a fire in said fire place was suggested.
   Thanks to Teds’ military training our fire wood mission was a success; he had gathered intel on some caches of pre-cut fire wood.  Our team made quick work of liberating about a trunk full of nice firewood from an unsuspecting auto body shops wood pile.   We returned to the party like concurring heroes.  As we placed the wood in the fireplace Ted brought in some accelerant to make lighting the fire easier.
   As Ted drizzled the jet fuel on the wood most of the party goers had gathered in the living room to enjoy the warmth of good company and the gentle warmth of the fireplace.  There were four of us sitting on the couch which was directly in front of the fireplace.    Unbeknownst to everyone…….. there were certain physical properties acting in concert with each other that would soon prove enlightening, to say the least.
   It seems that jet fuels evaporation temperature is quite a bit less than oh let’s say gasoline.  As the lively banter was flowing so was an invisible vapor cloud of jet fuel.  It also seems that jet fuel vapor is just slightly heavier than air, which ensured that this invisible vapor cloud was slowly creeping along the floor straight toward the couch. 
   As the tip of the lit match touched the saturated log everything went into hyper slow motion.  This tongue of fire came blasting out from the fireplace rolling across the floor like huge tidal wave about to crash on the beach.  The searing heat reached our faces a fraction of a second before the tongue of fire did; all four of us reacted in unison, leaning backward throwing our legs high in the air.  The entire couch flipped backward sending us sprawling across the floor.  Two amazing events then transpired at the same time, the tongue of fire was sucked back into the fireplace as quickly as it lashed out at us; and not one of us spilled one drop of our refreshments.
   Needless to say the rest of the party was not near as exciting as that.  We spent a few more days at Teds’ and had a great time, I got to pet a seal that was sunning himself on the rock jetty and generally experience laidback days in sunny southern California.  Mike and I would leave the next day and head north to San Francisco, where we would part ways.  He would travel farther up north to Oregon to see his sister and I would turn right and head east back home to Council Bluffs.  But don’t worry I will be back again next week to tell you about my two days in the City By The Bay.
~Owen Burgin~