Category: Travel

I forgot to fully charge my phone Wednesday night, and I ended up with a dead phone on the way to the airport (drained battery).   The rental car had no USB port to charge it with.  I could not use my notebook computer to charge it*. Finally – no open outlets at San Francisco airport’s International Terminal (come on SFO, we want the same tech amenities you have in Terminals 1, 2 and 3).  So! Cannot read e-mail or send e-mail, get called or texted, or talk to people – or anything. SO WHAT, I realized. Sit back and take a break from it all !

*One final trick for me to get a charge into the phone battery would have been to connect the phone with its USB cord to my notebook computer. It just so happens that my new firm-issued computer’s start switch has a glitch. It cannot start up without being connected to an electrical outlet.  Aargh.

What a crazy day .. jam packed with meetings and emergency e-mails (‘Can you send it right now? On a phone call; I need it right away’) and conversations.   Forget about lunch – no time; had to leave at 1.30 pm to make my 3.45 pm flight.  At 1.45 pm I got up, yelled at my colleague (his flight was later).   ‘Pack it up! We’re leaving !’.   We ran into some some traffic on the way to the airport, and at the Hertz Car Rental return, the attendant noticed a big scrape on the back wheel well.  ‘What’s this?’ she asked. Shocked, I said ‘I have no idea when that happened or who did it’.  I filled out a form to admit to the damage (a good thing that American Express insures our corporate car rentals), signed it, and now I had to make a run for the security checkpoint at International Terminal A.    ‘Can I still check my bag?’ I asked at the check-in counter.  ‘Yes, but they started boarding 5 minutes ago and we cannot guarantee that it will make it onto the plane’.  Please check it, I said.  (Thinking : the overhead bins are sure to be full by the time I get there.  I could gate-check the bag at the plane, but then I’d have to throw out the toothpaste and shaving cream and a few other items to get it through security.  Not doing that.)    Anyway .. made it onto the plane with time to spare, and my bag made it onto the plane as well.   I love Alaska Airlines.

 

Here is a Boeing 787 Dreamliner from China Southern Airlines that I spotted at the gate next to ours as we arrived into San Francisco Airport.   There is a mesh screen on the window that I took the picture through, unfortunately (the black dots in the picture).  Click on the picture to make the Moiré pattern brought on by the reduced picture size below, disappear.

P.S.  The cat is out of the bag regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mail address that I wondered about .. it is hdr22@clintonemail.com (or it was – it is most likely an account that is deactivated by now).

 

I had to make a run for my flight at San Francisco airport today after my meeting in downtown but I made it.  I took a brisk walk from Beale Street to the Embarcadero BART station, which took my right into the international terminal in SFO airport.   Luckily I could use the expedited lane through security (besides being stuck in traffic, this is the other place where one gets tripped up when one is short on time!).

[From WIkipedia] The F Market Line (historic streetcar service) in San Francisco, opened in 1995, runs along Market Street from The Castro to the Ferry Building, then along the Embarcadero north and west to Fisherman’s Wharf. This line is run by a mixture of PCC* cars built between 1946 and 1952, and earlier pre-PCC cars.

*Presidents’ Conference Committee

 

I have a meeting tomorrow at our client’s head office in downtown San Francisco, and so I am staying over in downtown (instead of over on the east Bay side in Walnut Creek).  The pictures are from around Market Street in the Embarcadero district.

 

We had the Disneyland plane again to San Francisco on Monday morning.  By now I can probably make my way out of San Francisco airport blindfolded!, I thought as I walked out to go to Hertz to meet my colleagues and pick up the rental car.

 

It was Monday morning, and so I did my usual taxi ride out to the airport, to step onto the plane for San Francisco (nevermind that it’s the President’s Holiday here in the USA).

 

My flight out from San Francisco to Seattle on Thursday night was not bad.  President Obama interfered with our travel plans with his arrival into San Francisco, though.  There was a ground stop in place for two hours.

Here’s a ‘dash cam’ picture from of the San Francisco Bay Bridge at night, as I drove across it at 1 am on Monday morning.   (The ‘dash cam’ is my iPhone, running Google Maps as I drive.  I just pressed a buttons to take the picture).

I made my way to San Diego airport early evening, but it was past midnight by the time we arrived at San Francisco airport.

A rainstorm with high winds had battered the city all evening. ‘High winds on bridge’ flashed a sign on I-80 still, by the time around 1 am as I was driving by.  But hey : no snarled-up California freeway traffic at those wee hours in the morning.

On Saturday I went my first little league ‘football’ game (the term football being loosely used, since it is played by 6-year olds!) on Saturday.   My nephew was one of the little tykes running around on the field under the guidance of two coaches.  It is flag football, so there is no tackling.  The pursuer rips a flapping velcro ribbon from his opponent’s waistband,  and is a ‘tackle’.

Later in the day my brother and I made it out to the beach late afternoon, and then went for a beer at a local microbrewery.

 

Friday night’s flight out of San Francisco to San Diego to visit my brother turned into a belary-eyed midnight/ early morning affair.  The incoming airplane was several hours late, so it was midnight by the time we stepped on board, and 2 am when we arrived in San Diego.

 

 

Busted flat in Baton Rouge, headin’ for the trains
Feelin’ nearly faded as my jeans
Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained
Took us all the way to New Orleans

I took my harpoon out of my dirty red bandana
And was blowing sad while Bobby sang the blues
With them windshield wipers slappin’ time and
Bobby clappin’ hands we finally sang up all the songs
That driver knew

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free
Feeling good was easy Lord, when Bobby sang the blues
Feeling good was good enough for me
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee

From the coal mines of Kentucky to the California sun
Bobby shared the secrets of my soul
Standing right beside me Lord through everything I done
Every night she kept me from the cold

Then somewhere near Salinas Lord, I let her slip away
Looking for the home I hope she’ll find
And I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday
Holding Bobby’s body next to mine

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’ left is all she left for me
Feelin’ good was easy Lord, when Bobby sang the blues
Buddy that was good enough for me
Good enough for me and Bobby McGee

The words are from Kris Kristofferson’s 1969 song ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, of course.  I loved the song ever since I was in high school, and I love the melancholic Kristofferson rendition.   Man!  Got to listen to that song again, I thought today, as the California sun sat high in the clouds, as my colleague and I made our way down on Highway 101 to Salinas. (We are holding a workshop with some of our target users.  They are getting tablets with which to manage their work in the field, and it is very important that we get their feedback).

 

I went to the dentist in Seattle downtown this morning, then home to pick up my suitcase and to catch the taxi out to the airport.   We were not directly impacted here on the West coast by the massive snowstorm in the Northeast, but our departure from Seattle was delayed by 90 minutes, nonetheless.  Two bolts were found to be missing from one of the wings (!) and it took time to track down the exact right parts in the warehouse to fix it.    It was 4 pm by the time I left San Francisco airport in my rental car, and of course then traffic through the city to get to the Bay Bridge is everywhere.  I should have taken BART (the train), but I had conference calls to dial into and the train is so noisy, that that would not have worked.  Ah well.  I made it in to work at 5.45 pm just to say hello to everyone before we wrapped it up and went to the hotel.

 

The shopping catalog of the sky (‘SkyMall’) has filed for bankruptcy.  I paged through it many times to ogle the offerings inside, and chuckling at the weirdness – but I have to think long and hard now to remember when the last time was when I saw one in the back pocket of the seat in front of me.

 

My colleague and I shared a rental car and he drove us to the airport.  We always drive through a tunnel on the way there and today I finally checked out the San Francisco map to pin down the location of the tunnel.  It’s the upper deck of the Yerba Buena Island Tunnel, in fact.  Yerba Buena is named for an abundant plant in the area, an alternative name for  hierba buena, literally meaning “good herb” in Spanish.

 

 

No, this is not me! It’s passenger Chris O’Leary, tweeting that he was the only one on a 76-seater Delta flight to La Guardia airport in New York City. (One more passenger actually boarded right before the door closed, though).  Hey – no screaming babies, and I can lean my seat back all the way at any time, he said afterwards.

As for me : I had canceled my flight to San Francisco for Monday, since I was still battling the nasty cold that had started on Wednesday last week.

I was well enough to travel today and made it in home, albeit with some discomfort and pain in my ears as we descended.

 

It’s time to go back to work and travel out to the project site in the Bay Area again.  Late today I ran out to Bergman’s luggage store in downtown to buy a new roller bag.  The casing and zippers of the one I have are totally fine, but the wheels are coming off !  Not good! Maybe I can have them replaced, but that will take time.  I ended up buying a TravelPro bag that was slightly more expensive than the Samsonite ones. I really wanted a bag with two big wheels, not a ‘spinner’ with the four little ones.