Travel Diary

It’s show day!

Checkout was 11am, but that was too early for my needs. I called to ask about delayed checkout. They said it was about $10 an hour. I declined at first, but then called 15 minutes later and said I would extend until 12pm. I watched Redzone after getting ready to leave (and finished that pizza). At noon, I headed downstairs and checked out. They didn’t charge for the extra hour, so that was nice. I asked about leaving my bags, but they were not able to do that. I guess I couldn’t complain since two other things were comped. It does feel like Best Western on Hopyard includes those extra perks each time. Hard to say. But holding bags would be a welcome nicety.

Since I had my large suitcase, it would be tough to walk around much, so I went across the street to a pub called Draft to watch the football games. The place was packed. Not great. I couldn’t really find a seat, but some nice people noticed my situation and offered a chair near them. I planted myself and watched the screens for a while. Since no server ever came by for drinks, I never ordered anything, and that was perfectly fine. No need to pay for overpriced beer. I would be better off.

After a couple of hours, I headed out. I stopped by the gas station for a beer and then walked to Stoneridge. Then it was once again down the dirt trail since the sidewalk construction still wasn’t done (again, very slow construction in California) and waited at the Park N Ride. Levi and Dawn arrived and we headed to San Jose.

At the restaurant, we unloaded the props and bags and headed upstairs. I thought all shows would be downstairs after the last time, but I guess that changed. Oh well. The sound is much better upstairs anyways and the crowd size wasn’t very large. We had plenty of time before the show, and as I was acting and not managing, I just napped for a while.

Then we got ready and the crowd arrived. The show went great and was fun to do once again, although script changes made memorizing it all a bit tougher. It had been a show where I didn’t need to look at the script until the day of the show. Afterwards, we loaded things up and headed to my hotel. I handed over the huge props for the upcoming Ozzy show. It was nice to have those out of my hands; it was the reason I had the large suitcase with me.

I checked into the hotel and noticed a nice complimentary coffee machine. Yeah, it’s mostly sugar water, but fun to try, which I did. I then found my room, which was very nice. The place was Best Western and I guess the quality differs for each location. This one was well done. After unpacking, I did notice that my earbud case was missing. Shoot. I had received an alert about that during the drive from the restaurant, but didn’t think it was serious since alerts sometimes come when internet access is lost. But this was bad. I needed to get that case back. I guess whenever in doubt, doublecheck right away!

I called the restaurant and asked them to look for it. The lady on the phone agreed, but then somehow the phone hung up while she was doing so. So I called right back. A man answered and also agreed to look for it. A couple of minutes later, he said he found the case. Yes! He said they would be open for a while (I mean it was only 9:30pm Saturday night) so I said I would head back down there.

I summoned Lyft and waited for a ride. After two minutes, I noticed the car was not moving so I instantly canceled and summoned Uber. I don’t mind waiting sometimes but this wasn’t one of those times. The car showed up and we headed down there. The drive time was only 10 minutes, although it felt quite long. If the place wasn’t open, I would have to postpone my flight on Monday and that wasn’t something I wanted to do. Plus, I was already upgraded to first class and I would lose that perk.

I got dropped off and ran inside. The employee had them for me and I was quite grateful and happy. I left with a huge sigh of relief. Since there was no hurry, I decided to walk back. Heck, I didn’t want all my dinner show profits to go towards rideshare fees.

It was a nice walk back and I saw parts of the city I’d never seen before. I guess I’ve never really spent much time walking in San Jose outside of the airport area. This was fun. A particular challenge was the underpass that didn’t look to accommodate pedestrians; however, Google said it was the path to take, so I just sprinted under it when no cars were coming. Suffice it to say, I made it safe and sound.

Then I walked past a stadium (SAP). Fun to see. I had never attended any events there, but maybe in the future. The last interesting street was “The Alameda” and it had a lot of nice shops and cool sights. San Jose can be a very fine city. Finally, I was back to the hotel.

I packed up everything, made a video, and then went to sleep.

Last EntryNext Entry