I now have so much more respect for anyone that can navigate
their way around San Francisco airport. We left Napa early, around 8am, to
allow time for rush hour. Good thing, the Bay Bridge took forever to get
across. But that was the easy part of the commute. The hard part was seeing a
sign telling us to get off at San Bruno Blvd, and there were 2 identical
looking San Bruno exits.
You know where this is going. Yes, we took the wrong one.
Ten minutes later, we were back on the freeway and
eventually found our way to the rental return. Then for some reason, we had to
go to the International Terminal to find our gate, where we were to take a
shuttle to our gate. Huh? Go to one gate to take a shuttle to another gate?
Apparently so. The SFO airport is under construction so this is the way it
works. We managed to get to our “real” gate about 90 minutes before flight departure,
so all was well.
After an authentic Chinese food meal, where I imbibed in
several beers to calm my pre-flying nerves down, we went on this ramp-looking
thing to board the plane. Not the usual tunnel, but a ramp outside. Our plane
hadn’t been through puberty yet, hence the need for beer to not go insane. For
those who don’t know, I don’t have a problem with flying itself—it’s the taking
off and landing that I don’t like. And on a baby plane? Yikes.
To top it off, several musicians boarded the plane with us.
One carried a guitar and looked like an older, scruffier Bob Dylan. Others
looked like those hair band guys in the 1980s. I found my mind wandering to the
story of Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly (both musicians who died in a plane
crash) and I really hoped these particular guys were not famous. That way,
nothing would happen to our baby plane.
I was happy to learn that no, they were popular in
California but they were not famous, and we landed just fine.
Then came Los Angeles traffic in a taxi to arrive at the
conference hotel. I was able to unpack everything, not just the first layer of
my suitcase. Felt great. Then we discovered the hotel only has Pepsi products
and not Coke, so we walked across the street to the Hilton to buy some coke
products. Yay for those hotels who have Diet Coke!
Tomorrow, the conference starts. CJ and I have gone through
our bags of free books, schedules, etc. and this looks to be a great year of
speakers.
More to follow…
No comments:
Post a Comment