From the Doomed Hotel
Jan. 28th, 2006 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeI got to Oakland airport with time and to spare yesterday, mainly because there was nobody in the security queue (that seems to be the biggest variable, and the main reason for getting there really early). When I checked my luggage, I saw that my flight was showing a 20 minute delay, but that was better than the subsequent Seattle flight, which was listed as cancelled! So much for any possibly of having empty seats on my flight, which of course they would fill with as many people from the later one as they could.
The equipment on the flight to Seattle was a 737-900. That's a 172-passenger version of the 737, and it seems huge. And it seems to take a long time to board and deboard, especially with a full flight. I didn't check, but I wondered if maybe Alaska had switch equipment arouund and put the larger plane on the 4:55 slot to try and get as many of the people, including those from the cancelled flight, although that seems like it would be tricky.
We ended up being nearer to an hour late to Seattle, mostly due to the slow boarding. I was sitting in row 23 (eight rows from the back of the plane) and by my watch, from the time they turned off the seat belt sign to the time I exited the plane was twelve minutes. Claiming luggage was routine, and when I called the hotel, they directed me to cross over the skyway to island 1. Eventually the Raddison's shuttle bus arrived. The driver asked if I was meeting someone at the hotel, as there was a woman wearing the same kind of jacket as me there. Yes, that was Lisa. Poor Lisa had lost track of the flight number, airline, and even the origin city, and had arrived an hour early and had to wait an extra hour for me to boot.
Last Guest Con is a minor event in the hotel this weekend. It looks like there is a meeting of the local Democratic Party here. (I guess it's the state central committee meeting, based on Googling for it -- the Washington State Democratic Party website is not saying directly if something is happening today that I can determine, but you can figure it out indirectly from statements elsewhere on the site.) It looks more like an SF convention than you might expect. There are people at tables handing out paperwork, people wearing membership badges with strange stickers on them, and party flyers up on the walls. Yes, party flyers. Apparently these events have room parties the same way SF cons do, to promote various people or causes. And here hotels keep trying to tell us that nobody ever does room parties and we SF fans are strange for trying to them. We passed people with carts hauling in cases of beer -- more beer than I normally see at an SF con party.
A somewhat spooky element to me was that one of the stickers people were wearing was to promote the candidacy of Dwight Pelz for state Democratic Party Chairman. It was strange to me to be in a hotel I associate with SF conventions surrounded by people with bold "Pelz for our Party" stickers. I'm sure Bruce would have been amused.
The equipment on the flight to Seattle was a 737-900. That's a 172-passenger version of the 737, and it seems huge. And it seems to take a long time to board and deboard, especially with a full flight. I didn't check, but I wondered if maybe Alaska had switch equipment arouund and put the larger plane on the 4:55 slot to try and get as many of the people, including those from the cancelled flight, although that seems like it would be tricky.
We ended up being nearer to an hour late to Seattle, mostly due to the slow boarding. I was sitting in row 23 (eight rows from the back of the plane) and by my watch, from the time they turned off the seat belt sign to the time I exited the plane was twelve minutes. Claiming luggage was routine, and when I called the hotel, they directed me to cross over the skyway to island 1. Eventually the Raddison's shuttle bus arrived. The driver asked if I was meeting someone at the hotel, as there was a woman wearing the same kind of jacket as me there. Yes, that was Lisa. Poor Lisa had lost track of the flight number, airline, and even the origin city, and had arrived an hour early and had to wait an extra hour for me to boot.
Last Guest Con is a minor event in the hotel this weekend. It looks like there is a meeting of the local Democratic Party here. (I guess it's the state central committee meeting, based on Googling for it -- the Washington State Democratic Party website is not saying directly if something is happening today that I can determine, but you can figure it out indirectly from statements elsewhere on the site.) It looks more like an SF convention than you might expect. There are people at tables handing out paperwork, people wearing membership badges with strange stickers on them, and party flyers up on the walls. Yes, party flyers. Apparently these events have room parties the same way SF cons do, to promote various people or causes. And here hotels keep trying to tell us that nobody ever does room parties and we SF fans are strange for trying to them. We passed people with carts hauling in cases of beer -- more beer than I normally see at an SF con party.
A somewhat spooky element to me was that one of the stickers people were wearing was to promote the candidacy of Dwight Pelz for state Democratic Party Chairman. It was strange to me to be in a hotel I associate with SF conventions surrounded by people with bold "Pelz for our Party" stickers. I'm sure Bruce would have been amused.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-28 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-28 11:13 pm (UTC)I've often thought Bruce would be amused...
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Date: 2006-01-29 08:42 am (UTC)