Travel Diary

So for Wednesday morning, I woke up at 4 a.m. with the idea of being on the road at 4:15 a.m., and that's pretty much what we did. I figured, okay, we're going to beat the fog. Well not the fog, but at least the chance of an accident was lower since it was before traffic started getting thicker.

We got to the same place again, and uh oh, traffic was really starting to slow down. There was a police car or some vehicle with lights on and I thought, I hope they're not stopping traffic completely. But it was in the two right lanes, going very slow so people could go around it. But it was getting very concerning. Once again.

Shortly after that point, we got up to a place where visibility was near zero. It's just a weird feeling when you're going any speed and you just can't see more than five feet in front of your car. Yeah. That's concerning. And you also become really worried about someone smashing into you if they're going too fast. So that was getting a little bit nerve racking. It helped when we finally started to get into a line of cars all going slowly with lights blinking. My main concern was things coming to a stop because of an accident, but luckily no accidents. We just kept going at a safe speed, and finally a few miles later, got past the point where we were stopped the day before, and then, like a light at the end of the tunnel, we got through the fog, and it started getting lighter and lighter.

A few minutes later, we heard that they had closed the road. So everyone at a certain point behind us was pretty much getting turned around, so yeah, I would have probably missed maybe another flight had we not gone that early in the morning. It was a good lesson. In areas like that, you really have to account for the fact that fog can mess up the entire commute. I didn't really think that was so bad before, but when you're in it, you realize it is pretty serious stuff.

In the New Orleans area, there wasn't an accident, but a tire did fly off a car and hit my friend's truck. So that caused a little bit of damage, but not enough to cause an accident. It was mostly cosmetic, yet it just kind of sucked. But still, nothing you can do about that. And it's the kind of thing where you don't really want to try to swerve to get around a flying tire because then you're going to go into another lane and even if the traffic's not too heavy, you just don't know when you're swerving into a lane and into another car, so just not a good idea.

Sometimes it's better just to take the take the object head on and see what happens.

I said farewell at the airport and got into the security line. It went fairly fast, and I got through that and was looking for a duty-free store because I wanted to buy some tax free liquor, though I couldn't find any store like that.

I did find a Chick-fil-A and got a chicken biscuit sandwich, which was pretty tasty. Not the healthiest thing, but I was pretty hungry at that point. I hadn't eaten or I hadn't drunk anything that day, which was a really smart idea for these kind of commutes because you don't want to fill up on coffee when you're going to be in a three hour traffic jam.

This time it didn't happen, but the day before, if I had had consumed coffee, I would have had to stop and use the bushes on the side of the road.

I then reached my gate. I had been hoping for an upgrade. When I first bought the ticket. I was first in line for the first class upgrade, and there were two seats left. However, the next day I was second in line and there were zero seats left. So I believe somebody bought the last two seats. And I guess my status wasn't hight enough to keep me in first, although both of us might have not gotten the upgrade anyway.

But I did have a nice perk of being the only one in my row. So as soon as we took off, I was able to lie across all three seats and get some sleep. I actually did probably sleep for about two hours, which was nice. No food was served because I wasn't in first class. But I still got a free drink. I had a scotch and then more sleep.

After landing in Seattle, before I went to the parking garage, I wanted to look around for a place to buy scotch at a duty-free place because the prices in Washington are extra high due to the liquor tax. And it took forever to find even one store. But I finally did find a duty-free shop, and the sign on the liquor display says these are only for sale for if you have an international ticket, which I did not. So I did some research later and apparently, yeah, these duty-free prices for liquor are only good for international flights, so it wasn't going to do me any good.

But now I at least know that I haven't been missing out on this deal. It's just not an option unless I'm on a flight from say London back to Seattle. Then it's a situation where I could do that.

Afterwards, I finally did go to the parking garage. Uber was only around $44, so I just figured, what the heck, 30 minutes to get home instead of an hour and a half, I'll take that.

I booked the ride, and within 30 minutes, I was back home and resting. The vacation was completed.