Travel Diary

Back to the Bay Area. It had been a while. How long? Almost a year. I figured it hadn’t changed much. I hand’t changed much. Just a little time had passed.

This was an interesting flight because it was mainly for a dinner show (lunch show in this case). The call time had been moved up an hour due to some miscommunication. But my flight had been set, and I would be landing at 10:15 in San Francisco for an 11am call time in Fremont, which was pretty unlikely to be met. However, most of these flights tend to pad extra time on, so I figured we'd probably land around 10 and I'd still have an hour to get there.

I wasn't upgraded to first class because there was only one seat left unsold, and I was about sixth in line, so I was in premium economy. It wasn't a huge issue. It was a short flight anyway. I ended up chatting with the lady next to me for pretty much the entire flight, which normally wouldn't be a problem, but I was using up my voice before the show. You see, for my current job, I don't talk very much, so my vocal cords aren't in the best shape for extended talking.

Despite taking off near the correct time, we still landed around 10:15am, which was very odd since usually tailwinds are headwinds don't affect north south routes, but there was nothing I could do. I would get there when I got there. Yet there was another issue in that the gate agent had not been present since we moved to another gate after landing, and we therefore had to wait 15 more minutes to actually get off the plane. Again, not ideal, but nothing could be done.

Once off the flight, I rushed quickly to the arrivals door and luckily, my friend Tony had randomly just picked the exact spot to be, in so I was able to immediately get into his car and we headed towards Fremont.

Traffic wasn't too bad since it was about 10:30am and I also wasn't in a huge rush. Better to play it safe and not get in any accidents or receive any tickets. A delayed show wasn't the end of the world.

But when we did get there, it turned out that things were delayed anyway and it was probably still 45 minutes before we started the show. Luckily, I hadn't panicked or really worried about things as there was no need.

The show was also condensed to some degree. There were no breaks between scenes so that meant we had three scenes all back to back giving them a single 45-minute scene, and then the final 15-minute scene. This was something we had never done before. Two scenes could be often be back to back, but three? Well, it was a first.

After our final scene, we were done with the big challenge and got to relax. But there was another item on the agenda: we were doing a read through a brand new script, which is always fun, although I didn't have much voice left at that point, so it was tough to even get through that. My voice was spent!

Afterwards, we wrapped things up and I got a ride to Pleasanton, which was fun since we were on the freeways that I used to drive home on all the time, although we did get to use the carpool lane. Notably, the traffic really wasn't all that bad.

I checked into the hotel. I would be staying at the extended stay in Pleasanton. I don't think I'd ever been in Pleasanton hotel before that I could remember. It was always just home for me. Originally, I had planned to fly home the same day, but as it was close to my one-year anniversary of leaving Pleasanton, I opted to just stay longer and visit old familiar places.

As I'd only gotten two hours of sleep I was pretty tired so I took a quick nap but finally got up and got ready for a run.

There were so many choices of where I could run, but I decided to head down Stoneridge and work my way over to the Pleasanton Sports Park. I packed my drone, so my weight was a little heavier than usual, and having the backpack rub on my shoulders wasn't comfortable, but I just had to bear with it.

When I got to my old neighborhood, Bird Land, I jogged by my old home as I wanted to see it, there was somebody in the garage at the time so I didn't want to openly take a photo, so I got one from a distance. Mostly things looked the same, although there were three big trucks out there. I guess the new family likes trucks. But otherwise, aside for a couple of nice rocking chairs on the porch, it was all the way I left it. Even the lawn looked like it still really needed replacing. After that, I jogged on over to Orloff Park, and then finally over to the Pleasanton Sports Park.

This was a place I had done perhaps hundreds of laps over the years. I wanted to send the drone up but I decided to wait a little while, so I kept running around the regular course and took videos here and there, once I reached the 2-mile mark, there were too many people out there on the field doing sports – I mean it is a sports park after all, but I wasn't able to send up the drone at that point, as it would've looked tacky.

I jogged on over to the creek and decided to go west as this would take me to 680. Once I reach Hopyard Road underpass, I noticed a sign saying the road was closed, yet I had seen someone else go down it, so I took the road anyway. On the other side of the underpass, there was a gate, and I had to crawl under it to get through I figured if the road were closed, I would just have to jog back. Otherwise, I would circumvent any obstacle that I could. It was about a half mile before I reached the part of the trail that they were rebuilding. While it wasn't ideal, it was easy to go around the tractors, and soon I was at the place where the creek tees into the creek that runs parallel to 680.

I sent up the drone at that point, and got some footage of ducks swimming, but there wasn't much else to capture except the area from way up high. After that, I headed south alongside the freeway. I guess it was good to have my noise canceling earbuds at that point since it could be quite loud at that part of the trail. Daylight was running out fast, but there wasn't much distance to go. I then took the trail back towards Main Street, and I ended my run about 9 miles in—right near Koll Center Business Park. My legs were pretty sore that point. I headed over to Safeway because I wanted to pick up some beer though I didn't have my ID with me. Luckily, they still processed the order, and I then headed to Round Table Pizza.

I would get Round Table off and on over the years when I lived on Canary Drive, but I always brought it home. This time, since it was really nice weather, I decided to eat it outside and enjoy a nice pleasant evening in my former city. Afterwards, I summoned an Uber and took it to the hotel, which was only about $7.67 for the ride. Not a bad deal. I tipped an extra five.

At the hotel, I got some editing done, and crashed around 9 PM as I was extremely tired at that point. It was fun to be back “home” again – at least for a little while.

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