Too Early or Too Late

Tomorrow I fly to Portland, to spend the next two weeks working from Lisa's father's house in Mehama. My flight leaves OAK at 12:15, which means it will probably start boarding about 11:45. I plan to take the train from Fremont/Centerville (FMT) to Oakland Coliseum (OAC). From there, it is a 15-minute bus ride to the airport. The buses themselves run on 15-minute headways and it takes about five minutes to walk from the Coliseum Amtrak station to the bus stop in front of the Coliseum BART station, so theoretically it could take as much as 35 minutes from arrival at OAC before I get to the airport itself, if my timing luck is poor.

I have the choice of trains that get me to OAC at either 8:44 or 10:44. (In both cases, I leave my apartment at the top of that hour in order to be at the station for the :19 departure.) The latter is cutting things a little fine, as I might find myself at the ticket counter less than 30 minutes before boarding. My recent trips have taken very little time to check in and get through Terrorization, and OAK has of late been deathly quiet even on a Friday afternoon, but that may be particularly because I've been so early and ahead of the rush for my flights. OTOH, the former seems a little early. I'm still deciding which to take, but am leaning toward the former, with the idea of having breakfast when I get to the airport and finding a place to get online and kill the intervening two hours before my flight. Too bad the Capitols don't run more often -- a train in between those two would be about right -- but we're lucky to have what's there already.