Category: Travel

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.

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).