Category: Travel

The week took its toll on me and I was very happy to pull into the rental car garage at SFO.   The airport was full of summer travelers that milled around, not seeming to know where to go or what to do.   In a way I envy them : they’re not frequent fliers, and probably on their way to exotic islands or getting ready to fly across the Pacific to Asia !

We arrived an hour late into San Francisco on Monday morning again (yes, it the fog).  As we were leaving the airplane, I noticed a big hand-written note held by the woman in front of me.  It said she speaks no English and to ‘Please help me find my connecting flight to Singapore’, her final stop on her way to Kathmandu in Nepal.

Southern China Air is the world’s third largest airline, and will soon offer direct flights from San Francisco to Guangzhou .. in southern China, of course.   Guangzhou is about an hour’s train ride from Hong Kong.  Check out the Guangzhou blog entry I made back in 2011 of a quick trip there.   The new SFO> Guangzhou flight will operate 4 times a week non-stop using a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

I was finally well enough to travel to my project in San Francisco on Monday morning, and off I went.  It was already bright and sunny at 5.30 am when my taxi picked me up, and the airport was crowded with summer travelers.   It was a very warm  99 °F (38 °C) here in Walnut Creek today.  At the end of the day when I got to the hotel room and opened my roller bag that had been in the rental car’s trunk all day, my clothes were warm to the touch – as if it had come out of my tumble dryer !

This week at the project site went by quickly .. must have been because we were very busy.  I made a dash for the airport as usual, ran into a little traffic southbound after crossing the Bay with the Bay Bridge .. but nothing too serious.  (The serious traffic jams start just a little later!).

These days, it is broad daylight as I step out of my house and into the cab at 5.30 am. The airport was busy this morning.   I suppose we’re on the upswing toward the peak summer travel season.  (Not that it matters too much : the airplane is filled to capacity every time I travel on it).

I made it in from San Francisco, and I’m following the reporting of the Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia (8 fatalities; some 200 others injured) with special interest, since my trip to Portland on the train is so recent.   

Check out the diagrams from the New York Times here.  Not yet known : why was the train barreling around a sharp curve in the track at twice the speed limit?    

I made it in to foggy SFO a little later than scheduled – as usual these last few weeks – and headed for our client’s Beale St building for meetings all day.

I had a nice view from the 23rd floor of the ambitious construction going on around First and Mission St in the Embarcadero district.    The Transbay Tower is going to be the tallest building in the city in 2017, with the futuristic aluminum-skinned Transbay Transit Center right next to it.   Here is a link to the TransBay Center Interactive Map.

It’s Thursday again, and at 1.30 pm sharp it was time for me to pack up for the drive to San Francisco International airport.

So .. our long weekend getaway came to an end, the way it always does.  We had some time to spare between checking out at the hotel and leaving from Portland’s Union Station, so we walked over to the Pearl District nearby.

These pictures are from Saturday night.   The neon rose is from a bike repair shop on the waterfront on the Willamette river.

The San Francisco to Paris on Air France leaves every day at 3.45 pm – the same time that I depart on Alaska Airlines for Seattle.   ‘Embarquement’  said the sign at the gate as the large group of passengers were boarding.   They fly 11 hrs and cross 8 time zones; I fly 2 and don’t have to adjust my watch.  (But hey, I would absolutely not mind flying to Paris again some time).

It was a grey morning in Seattle, and a foggy one in San Francisco, and so we had to wait for an hour before we could take off.

Thursdays at the project office go by quickly.   I have to jump at it when the project manager’s draft report comes out at noon, requesting our updates by 2 pm, because shortly after that, we make for the airport, and the workday is essentially done.

I made my usual run out to San Francisco on Monday morning. Check out the Google self-driving car that were in front of us as we left San Francisco airport, driving north on highway I-80 to San Francisco.  It’s full of gadgets, and it did have a driver in attendance, but his hands were not on the steering wheel.    The car made a lane change past a slow vehicle – automatically, I assume – signaling correctly each time before it changed lanes.

[From Wikipedia]  The software controlling the car is called Google Chauffeur. Google’s robotic cars are each fitted with about $150,000 in equipment.  That’s a 64-beam laser mounted on top, continuously generating a detailed 3D image of the car’s environment.

So .. another airplane tragedy, that brings another mystery.

Why did the young Germanwings co-pilot deliberately crash the plane?  I checked out the website for the German magazine Der Spiegel today to see if their reporting offered anything new.   Nothing new, but the police will investigate computers and materials obtained from the pilot’s family.

‘Stop being silly and go home’ said my project manager when I told him late today that I’m sick. (Head cold, sore throat since Monday).  And so I decided that was good advice : to fly while I still can.  It’s really miserable to be sick in a hotel room!  The last flight out on Alaska to Seattle leaves San Francisco at 9.45 pm, and that’s the one I took. The flight was not full, and I could stretch out where I sat in the emergency row with all three seats to myself. Man!  It’s been a long time since I have had an empty seat next to me.