Trip to San Jose November 9, 2016
It was a beautiful day, clear sky, green fields. I arrived at the airport at 8 p.m. for a 9:20 flight.
Pretty easy huh?
Nine hours later I arrived at my motel in San Jose at 6 o’clock in the evening.
Could I have driven the distance in that time? Maybe. Except I couldn’t have read a novel or napped on the plane.
I felt that I had been dropped into a 3rd world country.
The plane in Eugene was delayed for about 45 minutes. I had brought my laptop that weighs a ton and placed it atop my roll-on suitcase. The weight of it made that luggage sluggish and hard to pull. No problem, just walk down the jetway and board your plane. Right?
Wrong.
There was no jetway.
The plane was a little puddle jumper to Portland, and I guess it didn’t deserve a jetway. It was parked outside.
Okay. No problem. No rain. Except to my surprise once out of the airport gate, we entered a long outside corridor that was blocks long. (I’m not exaggerating this time.) We could leave our suitcase at the bottom of the stairs but needed to take electronic devices aboard. I lugged my heavy computer case up the stairs, and all was well.
We were off.
Except that we arrived in Portland 45 minutes late, and by the time I dragged that suitcase with the computer down a ten-mile long corridor and arrived at the gate it was closed. Bye, plane. I watched as it pulled pull away from its jetway.
They reassigned me. The next plane would leave in two hours. They told me to go to gate C 9. And where was gate C 9? Back down that ten-mile long corridor, with me schlepping that suitcase while my back swore at me.
And where was the plane?
Parked outside.
To conserve space they offered to check my bag for free, so I did, and we flew to San Jose while I read and napped and told my back all was well. It could relax.
We arrived around 4:30.
I decided since time was not a problem this evening, to try out my UBER app, and through it arranged for a car. (Only $5,16 they said.) I had planned on registering for the Tony Robbins event at the convention center this evening, but due to the late hour and my exhaustion, changed my mind. In the morning I would join the great throng of other contestants also registering. (My consultant warned me.)
The UBER site said a car would arrive around 5 p.m., then they said 5:30. I waited and waited, and the phone kept saying they would arrive in 2 minutes, then 3, then 4, then 2. And the phone was down to a 5% charge.
Finally, I gave up and took a shuttle ($25.00) to my motel—not a hotel, a MOTEL.
Usually one has a car when arriving at a “MOTOR lodge.” I had switched from a hotel to save money. That meant I had to walk to my room, number 183, down a pathway, over a bridge, through the woods, no, but it felt like a mile with me feeling I was pulling a cement truck.
I arrived at my room and decided not to leave it until morning. Among the many food items, packed in my suitcase is power-shake makings, so that will have to do for dinner. They warned us to bring snacks for there will be no lunch break tomorrow.
At the Motel I had to pay for WiFi, and yes I did need to sign a document from back home, which was one reason I bought the computer.
I’m on the computer now, figuring I should use it since I paid for it.
I’m not complaining, just the facts, and I got in a day of reading, and up there in the sky, I marveled again how exquisite it is to fly. Can you believe people can fly? They can pour themselves into a big heavy bird and sail away. It is incredible, even if ground duty makes it take all day.
And speaking of birds, this morning on the way to the airport husband dear and I saw a flotilla of geese, floating down like eiderdown feathers, and landing in a tight puddle of brown the size of a football field in an immense field of green. And behind them, another group ebbed and flowed in slow motion until they gradually joined the dark sea of Canadian geese sitting down for a feed or a rest.
Tomorrow the event.
To be continued.