kevin_standlee | Staggering Awake

As I work to adjust my body clock for tomorrow's trip to Montreal, I set the alarm for 4:30 this morning. As it happens, I awoke on my own at 3:45 and decided I'd better go ahead and get up. It's not so much that I need to work hard to adjust to a three-zone move -- that doesn't usually bother me that much -- but that because my flight is at 6 AM, I need to be at the airport between 4 and 4:30, and thus need to leave home about 3:30, which means getting up at 2:30. That's too early even in the destination time zone (5:30 Eastern Time).

At that hour, the only practical way to get to the airport is to drive; you can't take BART to SFO from here unless your flight is after about 9 AM. Traffic should be light, but I must remember that the San Mateo Bridge has overnight road work and drive by way of the Dumbarton Bridge. I considered taking one of the stay-and-park deals from a hotel near SFO, but as I'm only going to be away four days (Friday-Monday), it's still cheaper to just pay the parking. If the trip were for a week, then the stay one night/park free for a week offer starts to make sense.

Now, let's see if I'll be able to get to bed sufficiently early today to get a good night's sleep. I'll also take my neck pillow on the trip. You'd think that flying first class and sleep-deprived as I'm likely to be, sleeping on the plane won't be a problem, but sleeping on planes is almost always a problem for me. It's a sign of just how exhausted I was at the end of Norwescon that I fell asleep for the first 30 minutes of the flight back from SEA.