bad travel karma again

Believe it or not, it is possible to be in five airports in one day.

Our flight from San Francisco to Dallas was cancelled this morning. That was just the beginning...

Somehow, my flight got rescheduled, though I received no notice about it. Mom and Steve were on the same original flight, but they didn't get any rescheduling at all, which was odd. We got into a loooong line with other people who had cancelled flights. The college kid in front of us was cornering every airport official who passed by in an effort to convince someone, anyone, that he was following his original itinerary even though, like me, his flight had been rescheduled without notice. His face kept getting redder and redder, and it looked like he might have a heart attack or stroke or explosion of some kind. The Asian couple behind us were trying to get to Dayton, Ohio, and were insisting they could not be re-routed in any way. Fortunately for us, we got a pleasant and helpful desk attendent, who fixed everything for us, albeit circuitously.

So, we took a shuttle from the San Francisco airport to the San Jose airport. Then we got on a puddlejumper (yes, ANOTHER one) to LAX, and from there, a direct flight to Dulles (during which I watched Miss Potter - lovely movie, definitely one for the DVD collection), and from there, a car ride with my sister to BWI, where my car was (I had originally flown out of BWI). We got home at 1 this morning, and I'm too wound up to sleep. Em's bridal shower is later this afternoon, and I'm co-hosting it, so hopefully I'll drop off soon so I can be coherent and functional with the girls.

into the woods

We wandered into the spy shop this morning. A lot of the stuff on the shelves was junky plastic kids' toys-type stuff, though I did kind of like the Sherlock Holmes action figure. There were a few books on spies, weapons for sale, t-shirts for CIA, FBI, and CSI. It was rather disappointing as far as spy shops go.

We spent the rest of the day on a bus trip to Muir Woods and Sausalito. Muir Woods was beautiful. Many of the redwoods there are thousands of years old, and just touching them gave me the shivers. The woods cover a little over 500 acres, which might sound like a lot but really isn't when you consider that before logging began in California, there were about 2 million acres of old growth forest all along the coast.

U.S. Congressman William Kent and his wife purchased about 600 acres of the land in an attempt to protect it. In the early 1900s, a water company wanted to dam Redwood Creek, which would have flooded the valley. Kent objected to this, and the water company took him to court, but he outsmarted them by donating some of the forest to the Federal Government, and then Theodore Roosevelt declared the land a national monument, which was the first time that had been done with land donated by a private citizen. Originally, the site was going to be named after Kent, but he asked that it be named after John Muir, who was a naturalist and conservationist.

In Sausalito, we ended up in an Italian restaurant and had an amazing chicken dinner. Afterwards, we decided to take the ferry back to San Francisco, which may not have been the best idea because it was bitchin' cold and windy by early evening, even more so the closer you got to the water, and we had rather a long wait for the ferry.

I'm now comfortably swaddled in pajamas and blankets, and I've ordered tea from room service, which hopefully will arrive soon. In the meantime, I've broken into my Ghirardelli stash to tide me over, and Shaun of the Dead is on TV. Someone remind me to go see Hot Fuzz when it comes out.

shaky start

It was a good thing that Mom called me last night. I was originally under the impression that my flight left at 7 this evening, when it actually left at 7 this morning. I somehow read the itinerary wrong, and it was only when Mom said "we'll see you tomorrow for lunch," that the penny dropped. This meant that everything that I had planned to do today before the evening-flight-I-thought-I-was-going-to-be-on had to be done in the space of a few hours last night, which meant very few hours of sleep before my flight this morning.

Driving to the airport at 5:30 this morning wasn't too fun either, especially with the the torrential rain. It's amazing the huge waves of wind and wet that the big trucks create when they pass you. It makes one feel very small and vulnerable.

My first flight was a puddle-jumper to St Louis, which was not fun in the horrible weather. It's odd, I always seem to be on the puddle jumpers in bad weather. Fortunately, the i-pod was fully charged, and I had Neil Gaiman audiobooks to keep me calm. The Crowded House song "Weather With You" was playing on the plane's radio. Hearing it made me wonder if the Universe might be playing games with us. The original members of Crowded House are getting back together to record and tour, by the way. I'm looking forward to that.

The second flight was St Louis to LA in a normal-size plane. I got to see Casino Royale during the flight. Not a bad flick, as far as James Bond movies go, and Daniel Craig was rather yummy. I saw him in Munich and Sylvia, and he's a great actor. I now want to read the book version of Casino Royale, and I've also got a craving to see the original spoof version with Peter Sellers.

The only good thing about the flights was that the pilots got the planes above the clouds to minimize the turbulence. It was nice to have warm sunshine coming through the windows for a change.

San Francisco was sunny and windy, though warmer than Baltimore. I needed a good thaw. The cab driver was a very talkative and flirty Brazilian. Mom asked him to "pop the boot" so Steve could get my duffle bag in the trunk. I had to translate for the cab driver that this meant "open the trunk."

I had a scrumptious salad for lunch with lots of fresh seafood in it. Good protein can be soooo reviving.

We made a stop at the Ghirardelli chocolate factory. You could smell it a block away - the BEST aromatherapy. When you walk in, the greeter gives you a sample of chocolate. Today, it was dark chocolate with caramel filling. Cleverly, the entrance leads you right into the shop, and naturally, I wasted no time in chocolate shopping - several large bars in various flavors and two bags of samples. I blame it on the chocolate aromatherapy - it makes a girl giddy and lightheaded and less in control of her wallet. Worth it, though.