Travel Diary

I hadn't slept much, but time never seems to concern itself over such matters. The alarm went off at 4am and I arose. Everything was pretty much ready to go, so I made a video or two and then headed down at 4:20am to call Uber. The wait was supposed to be just seven minutes.

Sixteen minutes.

That’s the time I got when the driver was connected. I think Uber doesn’t always connect riders with the closest driver, but hard to know for sure. The driver’s car was all the way in Castro Valley, but at least heading my direction.

Until it headed north.

Okay, odd. But I figured out he was just dropping off another passenger. So my time would be under an hour when I arrived at the airport. Nothing I could do about that. I didn’t mention my flight time to the driver, though he was driving 85 for a lot of it. And that was bothersome. A ticket would have meant missing my flight for sure. An accident could have meant much worse than that. It’s just a bad policy for drivers to do when it’s their day job.

We arrived about 5:05am. TSA was light; however, despite a short line, it was SLOW. I mean it was stopped on one belt. I noticed that they had new space-age scanners though, like straight out of a sci-fi movie.

Another issue was that I wasn’t cleared for TSA Precheck. It’s the second time this has happened, and I have no idea why, which is concerning. But the lines were all the same anyway (just shoes off for the non-precheck people). I did slip under the rope to at least get into the line that was moving. No one seemed to care, so all was well.

After security finally cleared, I headed to the gate. I made it a few minutes before boarding, and finally got into my first class seat.

Yeah, I had been upgraded.

I asked the passenger next to me my normal question: “Heading out or heading home?” That led to a conversation for the entire flight, which was fine. I had nothing better to do. I also skipped the meal and free drink. I’d had enough food and booze for the weekend.

Well, I suppose I finally did have a mimosa. But that’s still like skipping a drink.

In Seattle, we touched down and I headed to the parking garage. Uber was only $42 and a private car seemed way preferable to riding the train for an hour. I took that route home.

Then it was straight to bed.

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