Wednesday

[edg]

2:40 AM: I'm awake. Gah.

I got offline at 9 or so. I finally got to bed about half an hour later, due to some last-minute hunting for stuff. I didn't get to sleep until 11:30. So a kinda-solid night's sleep turned into a three-hour nap.

I'm glad I checked my e-mail before I left; it turned out I'd misremembered the hotel we were staying in. That might have led to some unpleasantness when we arrived in Orlando.

3:40 AM: Finally out the door, I'm on my way when I remember that I need gas and cash. After stops at Exxon and the ATM, I'm back on my way, about 20 minutes later than I'd wanted to be.

4:30 AM: I take Route 50 in the wrong direction in the middle of DC, and end up halfway across the city from the airport. In my defense, the city of Washington DC does not appear to want anyone to use its airport, since it has almost no signs leading to the airport whatsoever.

5:10 AM: I'm now on I-495, the Washington Beltway, south of the city. It's only by sheer luck that I find I-395 north into the city, much less the exit to Reagan National Airport.

5:30 AM: I'm on surface streets, navigating almost blindly to the airport. The signs are there, and they might be perfectly visible in the daylight, but in the murky pre-dawn, they're almost incomprehensible - especially the small double-arrows used in place of a larger single arrow.

5:45 AM: I arrive at the airport's long-term parking and just miss the bus to the terminals. After ten minutes of waiting, another arrives.

6:00 AM: Check-in is painless. I discover that both flights to California are packed. I have window seats on both, one of them (the longer flight) in an exit row.

6:10 AM: Security is also painless, if rushed.

6:15 AM: I am at the gate 20 minutes before boarding begins. I finish Another Fine Myth and begin Myth Direction while I'm waiting.

6:40 AM: I board the aircraft. The gentleman assigned to the center seat of the aisle in which I have the window - behind whom, by coincidence, I am embarking - seems just dim enough to not grasp that my pointing at the window seat and saying "you should probably wait to get in, since I'm in F" means "don't get in the damn center seat and buckle up until I'm past, moron". I don't feel like arguing the point, so I offer to just let him slide over and take the window seat. "Oh, you're in F?" he asks; inside, I'm banging my head against the overhead bins. "You don't want the window seat?" "It doesn't matter enough to me," I say, and he obligingly slides over.

This is my first mistake. He is not only a large person, but he sprawls, becoming about half again as large as he would be under laboratory conditions. And since the plane is packed, I have someone on my other side, too. Fortunately, she's skinny and keeps her legs to herself.

The snack for the flight is little bags of animal crackers. I save these for Alex.

8:45 AM: We land in Atlanta. I figure I have a few minutes before the next flight boards, and it's only two gates down, so I buy an overpriced frozen coffee from the chain coffeeshop we all know and love. This is fouled up not once but twice by the barista. By the time I get out of the shop, my "zone" has just been called.

9:00 AM: On the plane, I discover that I am next to a different large guy who sprawls. But I'm in an exit row, so at least I have extra leg room, right? Wrong. I'm too close to the seat in front of me to be comfortable, and too far away to lean my head on the seat-back in front of me and go to sleep. I'm reduced to cramping my neck trying to sleep against the bulkhead.

The movie for the flight is Million-Dollar Baby. (I read fadethecat's fiction instead. Fade hasn't won any Oscars yet, but she doesn't require special headphones either. The "meal" is crackers and cheese. I save the Oreos and raisins for Alex.

11:45 AM local (2:45 PM my time): I land in San Jose. Apparently at least three other people have suitcases that are identical to mine except that they have different zippers. I learn this by lifting three suitcases off the carousel that aren't mine before mine shows up.

12 noon (3 PM my time): I arrive at the car rental stand. Jess'a and Alex are there to greet me. They are a sight for sore eyes.

12:20 PM: I get to the counter at the car rental stand. Thrifty cheerfully runs my credit card, and then tells me that due to Equifax sending back a negative report, despite the fact that I have a reservation of a month and a half's standing and the fact that I have enough money in my bank account to buy a car, they will not rent me the mid-sized car I was promised. I spend twenty minutes on the phone with customer service yelling at a series of escalated "managers". Finally I give up and take the airport bus back to the terminal so I can hire a cab.

1:15 PM: We arrive at Jess'a's mother's house. I am short $40 (cab fare plus tip). Jess'a finishes packing Alex's stuff. I hope that someone will offer me a drink. Nobody does. I also establish that the hotel we're going to has a shuttle from the airport that will run $30.

2:25 PM: I ask for and am given a glass of Crystal Light orange drink.

2:30 PM: We pile into Jess'a's stepfather's truck, and he drives us to the Sunnyvale Caltrain station.

3 PM: We decide to get lunch. Jess'a, Alex, and I walk a few blocks until we hit a pizza joint. We have pizza.

4 PM: The pizza finished (and my car woes of the past weekend related) and Alex's bladder relieved, we head out so Jess'a can catch a bus back to town. (Steve has already left.) The bus shows up as we are talking about how the bus will show up in a few minutes.

4:22 PM: The Caltrain train appears. demiurgent is right; at least to an out-of-towner, Caltrain is impressive. I manage to lug all of our gear (suitcase, duffel bag, car seat, backpack, messenger bag) onto the train, and collapse into a seat.

4:25 PM: Alex announces that he has to go again.

4:50 PM: We reach our destination (Belmont, if you're curious). We track down a Wendy's and shamelessly abuse their open bathroom policy.

5 PM: We find the bus stop to which the bus to the airport comes. It is on the other side of the train tracks from the Wendy's.

5:10 PM: The bus arrives. After confirming that it is, in fact, the bus to the airport, we board and take off.

5:30 PM: How this bus does not kill everybody else on the road I do not know.

6 PM: We arrive at the airport, right on schedule. I attempt to check in at United and discover that my flights are actually on US Airways - despite our having bought them through United and their being listed as United flights. I begin trekking a full mile from one side of the airport to the other, since US Airways is apparently The Ticket Counter At The End Of The Universe.

I also discover that I had misremembered "the time we need to be at the airport" as "the time the flight leaves. The flight leaves at 10:15; I'd thought it was 8. So we arrive at the airport at 6 PM and suddenly have four hours to kill.

6:30 PM: Alex kills an hour with a couple of Pakistani girls, racing around the airport and generally being young children. Their mother is a cute woman, maybe 30, who is waiting for her husband to come back from a business trip.

7:30 PM: The security check to the US Airways gates opens. We go through. Alex does not have to take his shoes off, although they look at the balloon (from the pizza place) askance.

7:45 PM: We sit down and eat dinner - hot dogs, which is the only thing available that doesn't come out of a vending machine.

8 PM: Alex decides that he doesn't want the balloon anymore. I grab a knife from the hot dog stand, take the balloon into a side room, and pop it before throwing the remains away. It seems somehow sad to me - like I'm assassinating a piece of childhood. Doesn't dissuade me from my duty, though; it's hard to jam something that floats into an open-top trash can.

8:30 PM: I sit down and start writing this.

9:15 PM: Now. We are half an hour from boarding. Since I started writing, Alex has fallen asleep. (He is using his lap desk, soft side up, for a pillow, and my shirt for a blanket.) I very much want to fall asleep. I've had 10 hours of sleep in the last 72. Unfortunately, I know that if I do fall asleep, I will fall asleep, and miss the boarding call. I very much do not want to do that.

We have a six-hour flight ahead of us. I will sleep then.

In the meantime, soda and fadethecat's writing.

9:45 PM: We are finally boarding the plane. Alex is so asleep that even when I wake him up, he sits down and falls asleep again halfway to the jetway. I shuffle things and pick him up. I don't have to put him down again until we're on the plane, which cheers me immensely.

He manages to walk to our seats (30A and B) with only two detours into conveniently empty rows. When we get there, someone is in 30B. I ask him to check his ticket, and it turns out he's supposed to be in 30F and just decided to randomly pick a seat in 30 instead of having to pay attention. It turns out that someone else is in 30F (they had 30E and D, and decided to see if they could get away with being in E and F instead). I let them haggle it out while I deposit Alex in B (he's smaller, so he goes in the middle) and wrestle my way over to A.

My laptop bag won't fit under the seat; it keeps catching on something. I'm still deciding whether this is frustrating or par for the course when I fall asleep.