Good Day to Travel
Jul. 5th, 2006 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeWe were a little late getting out of our hotel room this morning, but the hotel didn't appear to get too upset with us; besides, part of the delay was the lack of bellmen. Unlike when we moved in, they wouldn't let us take carts without bellman. (As I've found before, this sort of thing is dependent upon the individuals at the desk.) I was able to reduce down to only one checked bag by giving Lisa more stuff to carry with her. (She'll be in the Bay Area tomorrow.) There was a bit of a panic when I looked in the closet and asked her, "Did you mean to leave these costumes hanging here?" and she said NO! rather emphatically and scrambled to pack them.
After packing up her van, I waited until she cleared the security gate on the parking lot, then wheeled my way over to the light rail station. In the first of what would be a series of strokes of luck, a train came along right after I'd bought my ticket, and I climbed aboard for the trip downtown, with the change of trains at Old Town.
By my reckoning, my bag was just under 50 pounds, which can be a bit of a strain even for me getting it on to the older light rail vehicles, but I managed. At the San Diego Airport Commuter Terminal, I checked in with United Express for the short hop to LAX, and the bag weighed 48 pounds.
Clearing security, I heard them announce that there were plenty of seats available for the next United Express/Skywest departure. I was so early that there were actually two flights before mine. I figured that if I was going to hang around, I'd be better off doing so at LAX than inside the San Diego Commuter Terminal, so I took the earlier flight and got an exit row to myself.
The flight to LAX was uneventful, and unlike the trip down when I had to go from Terminal 7 to 8 rather quickly to make my connection, my connecting flight to Oakland was scheduled to be almost adjacent to my inbound 8x gate. Then I noticed another Oakland flight leaving in about 35 minutes only a couple more gates down. I went down to that gate, where I listened to the agent tell the person in front of my how many people were on the waiting list and how poor his chances were. I put my name in for standby anyway, and somewhat to my surprise, found myself on that flight, in an exit window on the CRJ-200. I didn't have the row to myself this time, but it's a pretty short flight and no big deal. I buried myself in my book and that was that.
The net result of this was that I arrived at Oakland Airport before my originally-scheduled flight from LAX was even scheduled to depart. Wonder of wonders, my checked luggage had made the trip as well, and I did not have to hang around OAK waiting for it to catch up to me. And since that originally-scheduled flight ended up getting delayed -- United paged me to tell me so -- I got home via BART before my original flight left LAX.
Now I just have to unpack, have something to eat, and fall into bed. I can see by the e-mails that my co-workers are chomping at the bit for me to be back in the office to dig into the vast amount of analysis they wish was already finished.
After packing up her van, I waited until she cleared the security gate on the parking lot, then wheeled my way over to the light rail station. In the first of what would be a series of strokes of luck, a train came along right after I'd bought my ticket, and I climbed aboard for the trip downtown, with the change of trains at Old Town.
By my reckoning, my bag was just under 50 pounds, which can be a bit of a strain even for me getting it on to the older light rail vehicles, but I managed. At the San Diego Airport Commuter Terminal, I checked in with United Express for the short hop to LAX, and the bag weighed 48 pounds.
Clearing security, I heard them announce that there were plenty of seats available for the next United Express/Skywest departure. I was so early that there were actually two flights before mine. I figured that if I was going to hang around, I'd be better off doing so at LAX than inside the San Diego Commuter Terminal, so I took the earlier flight and got an exit row to myself.
The flight to LAX was uneventful, and unlike the trip down when I had to go from Terminal 7 to 8 rather quickly to make my connection, my connecting flight to Oakland was scheduled to be almost adjacent to my inbound 8x gate. Then I noticed another Oakland flight leaving in about 35 minutes only a couple more gates down. I went down to that gate, where I listened to the agent tell the person in front of my how many people were on the waiting list and how poor his chances were. I put my name in for standby anyway, and somewhat to my surprise, found myself on that flight, in an exit window on the CRJ-200. I didn't have the row to myself this time, but it's a pretty short flight and no big deal. I buried myself in my book and that was that.
The net result of this was that I arrived at Oakland Airport before my originally-scheduled flight from LAX was even scheduled to depart. Wonder of wonders, my checked luggage had made the trip as well, and I did not have to hang around OAK waiting for it to catch up to me. And since that originally-scheduled flight ended up getting delayed -- United paged me to tell me so -- I got home via BART before my original flight left LAX.
Now I just have to unpack, have something to eat, and fall into bed. I can see by the e-mails that my co-workers are chomping at the bit for me to be back in the office to dig into the vast amount of analysis they wish was already finished.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-06 01:49 am (UTC)