I was on various trains most of today. I took lots of photos, and posted them to my Mastodon account throughout the day, so I am not going to include them here because I need to get some sleep tonight because tomorrow is a regular (i.e. starts at 0530) work day, albeit only a half-day before I go for my annual physical.

( Train Tales )

That's the condensed version of the trip. For all that it took about twelve hours from my departure from Reno to my arrival at the hotel, I think I'm happier having taken the train than any of the other alternatives. I would not wanted to drive (there were chain controls over Donner Summit on I-80) and flying is annoying. The one direct flight is only an hour, but the trip has been known to take as much as eight, including all of the time spent in airports. Besides, Southwest only has that one direct flight each way every day, with the other trips requiring going to Las Vegas, Burbank, or even Phoenix. I'm sure I'll end up flying in the future, but in this case, I let the train take the strain.

Today was the day for the trip to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. I had eventually picked out a route that would get me there early enough. Today I'd be spending a lot of time on trains and buses. Spoiler: I did get my visa application submitted with no hitches. The rest of this behind the cut is a mostly a bunch of transit geekery that those of you who follow me on Mastodon will have already seen.

( Twelve Trips by Transit )

The consulate receipt says that I can collect my passport and visa on Thursday, so I'll change my planned schedule and take Thursday off instead of Friday, then work on Friday. In theory, I could also change my Southwest airlines ticket and fly home on Friday morning, but that would probably increase the fare basis, and I know it would incur an early-departure fee from the hotel, plus I'd have to take another day off from work, so I'll continue with Plan A and go home on Sunday morning.

For getting around on light rail, Caltrain, and buses in the Bay Area, I have a Clipper Card, which is a stored-value card that auto-reloads from one of my credit cards when necessary. While I had not used it for a while, it worked just fine when I got here. So yesterday, I used it to right light rail to get some groceries, as there is very little within walking distance of my hotel.

( Groceries by Rail )

When I got back to my hotel room, I reached for where I thought my Clipper card was. Nothing. I reckoned that I must have dropped the card while on the train. Trying to find it would be difficult. So I logged into the Clipper Card system online and reported the card lost. $3 fee to freeze the balance.

I unloaded my groceries. Guess what I found at the bottom of the bag? That's right, my Clipper card. I must have dropped it into the bag when I though I was putting it in the pocked of my shirt.

I logged back into Clipper, but could find no way to reactivate the card. I called Clipper customer service, and after wading through their menus, reached a human being who told me that once a card is deactivated, it can never be reactivated. (Too bad; I'd had that card for many years, and it's inadvertently traveled around the world with me.) However, they were able to stop the system from trying to mail me a new card back in Fernley, and said that if I got a new card, they could transfer the balance to it. Well, I could do that, as there are VTA fare vending machines that will sell you a Clipper card across the street in the light rail station.

Walking over to the station, I bought a new card ($3 fee), went back to the room, and called Clipper customer service again. They said that they could transfer the $70 balance for yet another $3 fee, and that it will take between 2 and 5 days for the balance to appear. I hope it's back on the card by Monday when I'm going to San Francisco! However, even if it is not, I can add money to the card at VTA fare machines.

So I'm more or less okay other than being out $9 in service charges, and it could have been worse, with an unusable card being sent back to Fernley. I wish I'd tried checking my bag before rushing to deactivate my card.

I had an early-morning dentist appointment in Redwood Shores, so I was up at 5:30 AM to I would be sure to be able to get there in plenty of time, which I did, arriving over an hour early. But I'm sure that had I left 30 minutes later, I would have been late — traffic was already slowing as I worked my way north from San Jose at 6:30 AM.

I've now had the chipped tooth ground down and measured for a gold crown, which might end up being a little visible as it's the bicuspid forward of the molars, although not directly forward-facing. I prefer gold on a crown because it's so durable and non-reactive. There's a temporary crown in place until the permanent one comes back from the lab next month.

If I thought the morning traffic was bad, it was nothing compared to the afternoon drive, which I heard one of the KCBS traffic reporters describe as the worst traffic day she'd ever seen, and that's saying quite a lot. I have no idea what caused every freeway in the Bay Area to simultaneously freeze up, but in my case it took nearly 90 minutes to go twelve miles.

I got to the SAP open around 7:30 PM on light rail from my apartment, just as a third-set tie-breaker was being played to finish Lleyton Hewitt's singles match with Sam Querry. Querry won, but that wasn't the last we'd see of Hewitt, as it was back later than evening for the doubles match (partnered with Marinko Matosevic) against the #1 ranked Bryan Brothers. (Top seeded Milos Raonic defeated Michael Russell 6-3, 7-5 in the first evening-session match.) To my surprise, Hewitt/Matosevic took the Bryans the distance and won the "match tiebreaker" played in doubles matches these days to upset the top doubles seeds 6-4, 6-7 (5), 10-7.

There was another doubles match to play, but it was after 10:30 PM and I have to work on Friday, so I headed back toward the light rail station. Rather than wait ten minutes for the train at San Fernando station, I "cut across" to Santa Clara, but that just meant I ended up catching the same Civic Center-bound light rail train I would have caught in the first place. That train unfortunately terminates one stop short of Gish, where I was going. I had the choice of waiting twelve minutes for the following Baypointe train or walking. I decided to walk. Google maps says it's 1.4 km. It was a draw, with me getting to Gish just as that following light rail train did. In the end, I walked 2.5 of the approximately 5 km between my apartment and the Shark Tank. Oh, well, it's good exercise.

Saturday afternoon was the Westercon 64 committee meeting at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose and the first time the committee walked the hotel. I reckon it looked a lot different the weekend before during FurCon!

It was a pretty good meeting, but as such things sometimes do, it left us with as many questions as answers. If things go the way I hope they will, and in particular if we hit our membership projections so we can afford some of the things we want to do, this should be a pretty good convention. If you haven't bought your Westercon membership and have some expectation of attending, please buy it now so we can make good on our plans!

In particular, we have brainstormed a couple of what I think would be very fun uses for the Club Regent room (that's the former cabaret on the ground floor). The room is just about perfect for the things I've proposed; however, we can't commit to them yet. Many more discussions will follow.

( Overnight in San Jose )