Today was a relatively short drive from Sacramento to Emeryville. (We'd scheduled the first part of the trip in two pieces to give us some contingency should there be weather or other issues.) I got us some breakfast from the Starbucks a block from the hotel and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
travelswithkuma took charge.
( King of the Pillows )
By leaving later in the morning, we missed the worst of the morning traffic and got to the Hilton Garden Inn Emeryville around 1 PM. This stay is on points earned from our hotel stays during Worldcon 76. It took a few years, but we finally got to use the points. We asked the man behind the front desk to pull his face mask up over his mouth. He said, "I'll do it as a favor to you, but I'm the hotel manager, so I don't have to do so." That made Lisa so angry that we nearly walked out, but we went ahead and checked in. I will be complaining to Hilton about it, though. Why would you expect your staff to follow the rules if you won't follow them?
After check-in, we got everything out of the van that's going on the trip with us. A few things we'd brought with us this far went back into the van and will stay in California.
We walked to the EmeryBay Public Market food court and bought two lunches and two dinners. (Our room has a refrigerator and microwave oven, and we already had bought drinks.) I like the food from the food court here in Emeryville. After eating lunch, it was time for me to head for San Jose.
lisa_marli (LJ only) offered to let me leave my van at her place in San Jose and arranged to get off work early so that she could get me over to San Jose Diridon Station to catch the 6:05 PM Capitol Corridor train back up to Emeryville. But first I had to get to San Jose. In retrospect, if I wanted to be there by 5 PM, I should have left at 3 PM instead of 3:45. My Bay Area traffic skills have badly atrophied. However, as I continued to slowly make my way through the long, long slog that is I-880, I saw that the Express lanes (HOV-3 or pay toll) have opened. While mostly stopped in traffic, I dug out my long-disused toll transponder. (My license plate is also registered with FasTrak.) I made my way over to the Express lanes and dove in.
I do not know how much it cost me (the charges haven't yet hit my account), but if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have made it in time. The only problem for me was that it's very stressful driving at the speed limit with three lanes of nearly-stopped traffic separated by no more than a double-double white line. Fortunately, only one vehicle dove into the Express lane, and that one was far enough ahead of me that I had time to slow down.
I parked my minivan in Lisa D-H's driveway (leaving enough room for her car, of course), gave her a set of the minivan's keys, and she took me over to Diridon Station with twenty minutes to spare.
( First Train of the Trip )
On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at a FedEx Office near the hotel to print the train schedules for our trip. Amtrak, to save money, no longer prints train schedules. Even more annoyingly, they don't even make PDFs of the schedules available on their website. They only show you point-to-point schedules of your origin and destination, ignoring the intermediate stops. I wonder if this is part of the changes that came about when a former airline executive tried to run Amtrak and assumed that trains are only a point-to-point service and that intermediate stops are irrelevant. Fortunately, the Rail Passengers Association has managed to save schedules on their web site. I hope that Amtrak eventually comes to their senses, and remembers that printed schedules are part of the marketing of a route.
When I got back to the hotel, Lisa and I reheated our dinners purchased earlier and ate dinner while watching a video on my computer. Although the wi-fi included with the room is relatively slow, it's about the same speed as we used to have before we upgraded the DSL to cable, and it sufficient for watching YouTube videos.
Then I reviewed some of our travel plans and realized to my dismay that I'd forgotten to book our hotel stay in Los Angeles for our layover there on December 31. Worse, I'd obviously put this off too long, because most of the IHG hotels were either full or display absurdly high rates, both in money or points. For example, the Holiday Inn Express near MacArthur Park where we stayed when we transited Los Angeles on Amtrak many years ago would have cost 70,000 points, which is more than we're paying for four nights in New Orleans! I was able to find an acceptable-looking hotel less than a mile from Union Station in Los Angeles for less than $150 after taxes, and I hope that will work out. The challenge is apt to be that the Sunset Limited, when it's on time, arrives before 6 AM. Checking in to the hotel might be a challenge. I also fret about getting a taxi back to Union Station on January 1.
I also realized that I'd forgotten our hotel room in San Jose, where we will arrive on the night of January 1. Fortunately, the prices in San Jose aren't as absurd as they are in Los Angeles. I was able to book a room at the Holiday Inn for under $100.
I think that is the last of our travel plans settled. Tomorrow we have to be up early so we can be sure to get a taxi for the short trip over to Emeryville station. We're traveling so heavy, carrying both convention and camera stuff as well as our personal luggage, that we simply can't walk to the station the way we did the last time we did this trip. If we weren't doing the Business Meeting, we might be able to do it, but there's just too much stuff to move on this trip.
The next three days and two nights, we're on the train to Chicago, and there may be no timely updates here, although I might eventually do back-dated entries once we get to Chicago. The train route spends much of its time in the land of Nosignal, where there is no internet at all and often no cell phone signal, as it's often away from the corridors where there are cell phone towers and it goes through mountains. Unlike the doofus with which we once shared a table on a trip through the Sierra Nevada, we understand when when your train goes through a two-mile-long tunnel with a thousand-plus feet of granite above you, banging your phone on the table won't make it receive any better.
travelswithkuma took charge.( King of the Pillows )
By leaving later in the morning, we missed the worst of the morning traffic and got to the Hilton Garden Inn Emeryville around 1 PM. This stay is on points earned from our hotel stays during Worldcon 76. It took a few years, but we finally got to use the points. We asked the man behind the front desk to pull his face mask up over his mouth. He said, "I'll do it as a favor to you, but I'm the hotel manager, so I don't have to do so." That made Lisa so angry that we nearly walked out, but we went ahead and checked in. I will be complaining to Hilton about it, though. Why would you expect your staff to follow the rules if you won't follow them?
After check-in, we got everything out of the van that's going on the trip with us. A few things we'd brought with us this far went back into the van and will stay in California.
We walked to the EmeryBay Public Market food court and bought two lunches and two dinners. (Our room has a refrigerator and microwave oven, and we already had bought drinks.) I like the food from the food court here in Emeryville. After eating lunch, it was time for me to head for San Jose.
lisa_marli (LJ only) offered to let me leave my van at her place in San Jose and arranged to get off work early so that she could get me over to San Jose Diridon Station to catch the 6:05 PM Capitol Corridor train back up to Emeryville. But first I had to get to San Jose. In retrospect, if I wanted to be there by 5 PM, I should have left at 3 PM instead of 3:45. My Bay Area traffic skills have badly atrophied. However, as I continued to slowly make my way through the long, long slog that is I-880, I saw that the Express lanes (HOV-3 or pay toll) have opened. While mostly stopped in traffic, I dug out my long-disused toll transponder. (My license plate is also registered with FasTrak.) I made my way over to the Express lanes and dove in.I do not know how much it cost me (the charges haven't yet hit my account), but if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have made it in time. The only problem for me was that it's very stressful driving at the speed limit with three lanes of nearly-stopped traffic separated by no more than a double-double white line. Fortunately, only one vehicle dove into the Express lane, and that one was far enough ahead of me that I had time to slow down.
I parked my minivan in Lisa D-H's driveway (leaving enough room for her car, of course), gave her a set of the minivan's keys, and she took me over to Diridon Station with twenty minutes to spare.
( First Train of the Trip )
On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at a FedEx Office near the hotel to print the train schedules for our trip. Amtrak, to save money, no longer prints train schedules. Even more annoyingly, they don't even make PDFs of the schedules available on their website. They only show you point-to-point schedules of your origin and destination, ignoring the intermediate stops. I wonder if this is part of the changes that came about when a former airline executive tried to run Amtrak and assumed that trains are only a point-to-point service and that intermediate stops are irrelevant. Fortunately, the Rail Passengers Association has managed to save schedules on their web site. I hope that Amtrak eventually comes to their senses, and remembers that printed schedules are part of the marketing of a route.
When I got back to the hotel, Lisa and I reheated our dinners purchased earlier and ate dinner while watching a video on my computer. Although the wi-fi included with the room is relatively slow, it's about the same speed as we used to have before we upgraded the DSL to cable, and it sufficient for watching YouTube videos.
Then I reviewed some of our travel plans and realized to my dismay that I'd forgotten to book our hotel stay in Los Angeles for our layover there on December 31. Worse, I'd obviously put this off too long, because most of the IHG hotels were either full or display absurdly high rates, both in money or points. For example, the Holiday Inn Express near MacArthur Park where we stayed when we transited Los Angeles on Amtrak many years ago would have cost 70,000 points, which is more than we're paying for four nights in New Orleans! I was able to find an acceptable-looking hotel less than a mile from Union Station in Los Angeles for less than $150 after taxes, and I hope that will work out. The challenge is apt to be that the Sunset Limited, when it's on time, arrives before 6 AM. Checking in to the hotel might be a challenge. I also fret about getting a taxi back to Union Station on January 1.
I also realized that I'd forgotten our hotel room in San Jose, where we will arrive on the night of January 1. Fortunately, the prices in San Jose aren't as absurd as they are in Los Angeles. I was able to book a room at the Holiday Inn for under $100.
I think that is the last of our travel plans settled. Tomorrow we have to be up early so we can be sure to get a taxi for the short trip over to Emeryville station. We're traveling so heavy, carrying both convention and camera stuff as well as our personal luggage, that we simply can't walk to the station the way we did the last time we did this trip. If we weren't doing the Business Meeting, we might be able to do it, but there's just too much stuff to move on this trip.
The next three days and two nights, we're on the train to Chicago, and there may be no timely updates here, although I might eventually do back-dated entries once we get to Chicago. The train route spends much of its time in the land of Nosignal, where there is no internet at all and often no cell phone signal, as it's often away from the corridors where there are cell phone towers and it goes through mountains. Unlike the doofus with which we once shared a table on a trip through the Sierra Nevada, we understand when when your train goes through a two-mile-long tunnel with a thousand-plus feet of granite above you, banging your phone on the table won't make it receive any better.
