Category: Travel

[From Wikipedia] ‘Little Boxes’ is a protest song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963.   The song was reportedly inspired by the boxy houses of Daly City and expresses alarm at conformity and loss of individuality.   Well, the little boxes are still there today, but I see in writings of historians and sociologists that the people populating them are actually quite diverse with large Filipino and other Asian communities there.

Here are the words for the song.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And there’s doctors and lawyers
And business executives
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same,
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

I finally got to ride on BART today : the veritable and well-ridden by now – Bay Area Rapid Transit – in service since the ’70s and showing it.  Taking it to Walnut Creek at rush hour was a crowded, sweaty affair!

Over lunch time I got to see some of the sights in the Embarcadero area in downtown San Francisco.  It was a warm cloudless day. I did not have a lot of time and just walked straight to the waterside to check out the Ferry Building to see the water in the Bay.

I am at the airport here in San Francisco, heading home.  It is Friday and even at the early hour of 2.30 pm there was a little more traffic on the freeways* on the way here than we have on Thursdays.

*I should not say freeway.  I see on Wikipedia that the word freeway was first used in February 1930 by Edward M. Bassett, but it is now an outdated word.  We should just go with highway.  Or parkway.

It was interesting for me to see on Monday morning that Alaska Airlines sometimes uses the aircraft’s rear door for boarding the back rows of the airplane.  It’s not something that is done often !

I think there are studies out there that show that boarding all window seats first, then all middle seats, then all aisle seats is the quickest – but to do that in practice is a major challenge.   The airline will likely upset the super platinum elite frequent fliers that like to all board first – to go sit in the front of the airplane, or to go sit in their chosen seat further back.

I have a very smart smart phone.  It knows what I wanted to type in my message to my colleagues in San Francisco before I even started typing it.  My flight is ..  and there it suggested ‘delayed’ (in the grey box below my name, so you just poke it to pop it into your message.  You saved a whole lot of typing.

I made it in an hour later to San Francisco, so not too bad a delay.

I made it in to Seattle. The four days out at our client project site went by quickly.  It always does when we are busy.   I made my way through security and onto the Alaska Airlines flight. While we were at the gate waiting to get pushed back, there was a young woman sitting next to me juggling two iPhones on her lap.  From what I could tell she was feverishly sending and receiving e-mails on her two iPhones.  So I was relieved when the airplane door was just and she had to turn the two phones off.  Man!  Give it up!

My flight out, and my drive out to Walnut Creek went fine.  Monday on the road is always long day for me, mostly the result of getting up really early.  It’s an even longer day for my colleagues from the East Coast!  If we’re still at the office at 7 pm, that’s 10 pm for them.  Yikes.  Better to be in my position and stay in the same time zone.

I’m making sure I’m not getting lost while driving out to the office on my own tomorrow morning, by printing a map.   I will turn on Google Maps with voice instructions on my phone as well, of course.   The phone is working very hard when it is used as a GPS, and it can draw down the phone battery completely in an hour or so, though.  And then I’m up the creek without a paddle!

I am at San Francisco International Airport.   The prisoners have been released out of their asylum for the week, and we are all heading back home, some of the team members all the way to the east coast!

Our San Francisco-bound plane from Alaska Airlines this morning was parked way out, and away from the North Terminal.

So once we walked though the gate at the North Terminal’s boarding door, we went down- stairs and onto the tarmac. From there a constructed tunnel and a temporary, scaffold-like gangway got us into the airplane.

Well!  It was supposed to be a short week with Monday being Labor Day and all, but my colleague and I ended up holding the fort at the project site until today.  We finally got out of there this afternoon, and made our way to San Francisco airport across the San Mateo bridge.   One of these days I will take the train (BART : Bay Area Rapid Transit).

There were some glitches with my travel into the project office today – but nothing too serious.   Early in the morning the Alaska Airlines bar code reader at the boarding door refused to cooperate.  When it had finally been fixed, the attendant simply announced that ‘Everyone is welcome to board’.

After my arrival in San Francisco, it was my turn to rent a car for the team to share – but Hertz were out of cars.  San Francisco had too many Labor Day weekend visitors that brought back their rental cars only this morning.   But I finally got my car, and my colleague and I could take off for Walnut Creek by driving across the Bay Bridge.

I guess it was a fitting end to a hectic trip, with me arriving late at San Francisco airport to go home this afternoon.   I only had 10 minutes to get though security, so no time to wait in the long line to drop my roller bag as checked luggage. (Hey Alaska Airlines : you need more than one agent manning your check-in counters! Is there a strike back there?).

So out came the shaving cream and big tube of toothpaste (threw it away), and I headed straight to the security line with both my roller bag and backpack.   They were already boarding by the time I got to the gate.

And now I’m home, I ate food from my refrigerator, and I’m going to sleep in my own bed.  Life is good.

It’s always fun for me to unpack my suitcases and rediscover my acquisitions from a trip. These are almost always modest, since they have to fit in my suitcases.  If I didn’t have a backpack and two suitcases already, I would have brought one of my mom’s oil paintings with.  But that would have been the straw that broke this camel’s back.  Couldn’t have handled it, with me getting on the train to Amsterdam from the airport, and back again.

It’s still Friday for me since I flew all day ‘towards’ the sun in the west.   We made it into Portland’s little international airport a little late, but the airport did a terrific job of getting us through customs and the baggage re-check.

It’s just a short hop up to Seattle from Portland.  We only went up to 22,000 ft and was barely there when the pilot announced that we are starting the descent into Seattle-Tacoma airport.

I’m at Schiphol airport, making my way back to the United States.  We will fly all the way across the northern Atlantic and the continental United States, only to stop in Portland, Oregon !  Then on to Seattle.  I couldn’t find a direct flight from Amsterdam to Seattle for this Friday.

My mission Thursday afternoon was to make it to the Rijksmuseum.  To do that, I had to buy a tram ticket, and figure out the tram line to take.

I made it there with an hour and thirty minutes to spare before they closed.  Now I wanted to find the room where Rembrandt’s famous Night Watch painting is.   Luckily, the Rijks-museum is not the Louvre in terms of size : not even close.    But the gardens and park around it has been renovated very nicely and it all makes for a great space right in the city to stroll around, and eat some frites or stroopwafels*.

*Belgian fries or syrup waffles.

I arrived in Amsterdam Thursday morning at around 11 am.  I lucked out when I checked in : KLM offered business class seat upgrades at an 80% discount (which came to only a few hundred dollars).

So it was an easy decision for me to pay the money to sit up front in a big seat.  I got a few hours of sleep in on the overnight flight, that way as well.

It’s Wednesday night and I am at Cape Town airport.   My time is up, and I have to go back!   I will travel back the same way I came, via Amsterdam, with a one-night stay-over.  I’m leaving behind a wet and cold Cape Town area. It is still winter here after all, and spring and summer arrives late in this part of the country.