Planes, trains, police automobiles

We are on vacation to the East Coast this week and part of last. I had been working a lot of extra hours to get ready for this trip. We were moving the shop that I work out of into a much smaller shop and just the general travel time to and from work made my time at home that much more non-existent.

The week that we left for Baltimore, my work had me in Berkeley, Tahoe, San Jose, Sacramento (twice) and Discovery Bay, out in the delta. Then a trip back home and the next morning we all left for Huntington Beach. All tolled, I drove almost 1800 miles that week and a few days.

So after all that driving, we get to fly on 3 different planes making 2 connecting flights at large airports.

The last plane was held up at Chicago while the pilots were being flown in from Canada. They had a tire issue on the plane they were on and we had to wait. I know, why have us board if the pilots are still over an hour away? I guess that it was to see what would happen when you stuff people to capacity into a large tube without air conditioning or a breeze of any kind. Make sure that you hurry the people in get them seated, then don't tell them anything for the first 35 minutes. Why do this? Just to see what would happen? Wait to see if someone goes postal before we get airborne? I mean, if they are gonna go postal better that it happen on the ground, right?

After waiting an hour for the next train, we had a 20 minute light rail train ride to the stop for our hotel. The train that was at the airport left while we were getting our tickets around the corner, and out of sight, from the train. If the pilots hadn't been late. We wouldn't have been late. The train would still have been running on its 20 minute schedule instead of the night time hourly schedule. So now the late pilots cost us 3 hours.

We get off the light rail and walk in the wrong direction for 30 minutes. The directions given to me; walk in the same direction that you are going when you get off. Turn right on Cathedral street and walk to the corner of Franklin. That is where we (the hotel) are. In retrospect, walk in the direction you are going when you get off means, don't go in the direction of the train, walk in the direction that YOU are going when you get OFF the train ie: 90 degrees to the direction of travel that the train WAS going, but the direction YOU are going when you get OFF the train. Wacky East Coast directions. So, I can't lay blame entirely on myself for that particular misdirection, but I can on the others that came later.

So after walking for awhile and noticing that the area was looking increasingly like the "wrong side of the tracks" we ask a nice local police officer for directions. "You can't get there from here, easily". A lot of one way streets, traffic circles, and construction made it difficult for him to give us directions to get there easily. So, a car ride to the hotel, a helpful check in clerk and some very good, much needed hot pizza and all was right with the world.

Well that was our first day of vacation condensed. I hoped that would be all the excitement we would have on our vacation.