whew.
Okay, so the past few days.
Thursday: Left work 2-ish for a 4:30 flight. Had to run home super-quick and then stop at the curling club also super-quick on the way to the airport. Was checked in with boarding pass in hand and no bags to check, so it was going to be okay to get there 45 minutes before the flight instead of an hour. This was fortunate, because that was the pace I was on.
At about 3:15, I was a little more than five miles from the airport. This is how those five miles break down: I was on I-95 about a mile and a half south of exit 46, which was for I-895, the Harbor Tunnel. Another mile past that was exit 47, which was for I-195, which I intended to take to the airport. The stretch of 195 between 95 and the airport is a little less than three miles long.
Thing was, there had just been a bad, bad accident just before exit 47. I heard about it as I was coming up on the backup behind it, which at the time I joined it was (as we've seen) only a couple of miles long. If this thing had happened five minutes sooner, or I'd heard about it half a mile earlier, I'd have got off 95 at exit 45, which was Route 100, on which I could have got over to the B-W Parkway and to the airport by a different route. By the time I ground to a halt, I was committed to the 195 route, and dudes, remember I said this was about 3:15.
I got to the airport at about 5:10.
Fortunately, in the time I was sitting mostly still, I'd been able to call AirTran and verify that there's no additional charge to fly standby on a same-day flight between the same cities as your ticket, and the girl told me that if I missed the 4:30 there was another flight at 5:30 with plenty of room on it; and if I happened not to get on that one for whatever reason, there was another one at 6:40, so I'd get to Boston on Thursday night, no problem. I also called![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ellen_fremedon and then my dad for map-related advice, in which I determined with some confidence that getting off at 895 would not get me to 195 and thus to the airport; and by the time I was done having this conversation with my dad, I could see that the exit sign said "no exit before toll", cementing my confidence that 895 was not the way to go.
Anyway. I got to the airport a little after 5, and stopped at the check-in kiosk, where the man said I couldn't get on standby there, it'd have to be at the gate - but, oh, look, the 4:30 flight was delayed and hadn't left yet, and I might be able to get on it after all if I hurried. So I hurried!, and the guy in front of me at security was slow and obstructive enough that I couldn't get my shoes and my laptop and whatnot back together as fast as I'd have liked, and I hurried to gate D5, where the 4:30 flight was leaving from, and the door was closed. Alas. Guy in the waiting area said they'd just closed it, and commiserated for a moment, and then I went to D3, where the 5:30 flight was also delayed, and began with the standby procedure. And the girl was typing and typing and made a face and called on the phone for a supervisor a couple of times and told me there was something strange about my reservation, and it wouldn't let her put me in as standby. Which was indeed weird; and as she was still trying to solve this, they paged me from D3. She handed me back my boarding pass and I ran, and the D3 agent said she'd had to go down to the plane so she'd closed the door behind her, but the flight wasn't quite closed yet, and when she'd come out again the guy in the waiting area had told her there was a passenger trying to catch that plane, so yay! I got on the 4:30 flight.
Which didn't take off until about 5:50, and then got held over Providence because there were windy conditions in Boston, so we didn't land until after 7pm, by which time I should have been halfway to the Cape. Instead of which I picked up the rental car around 7:30 and arrived at Cape Cod Curling Club (which does not have internet) a little after 9:00. Measured the rings, then headed to the hotel and, as there was no internet there either, went straight to bed.
Friday: A two-team event (Cape vs. Seattle) is a piece of cake, I'll tell you what. Team practice at 9:00, team meeting at 10:00, first game at 11:00. Seattle wins handily. Out for some lunch. Back to the club, catch a nap, wake up for the second game 4-ish, game at 5pm, Seattle wins when Cape misses their last shot. A shame for them, but now the best-of-five series is at 2-0 and I begin to think about how I won't be on the Cape forever. Good times at the Irish pub with the site chair Friday night.
Saturday: I check out, because checkout time is 11 and late checkout is 12 and the odds are good that Seattle will win at least one game today, and as soon as they do the event is over, and as soon as the event is over I'm heading to Boston and my brother's place. If it happens that Cape wins both games on Saturday I can crash with the site chair for one night or, worst case, check back in to the hotel; it's Cape Cod in January, it's not like the place is packed.
Seattle is down one coming home with the hammer in the eighth and manages to take only one, so we go to an extra end - which Seattle wins when Cape, that's right, misses their last shot. So that's it, event finished, and it's lunch time on Saturday and I pack up the car and call my brother and say here I come! and hit the road.
I get all the way to Cambridge and then get turned around on the stupid ill-marked roads again, and have to call my brother and have him give me turn-by-turn directions to his place over the phone. That's it: I am buying a GPS. Anyway, when I get there, he and I head out again to the airport to return the rental car, and that's one less night of hotel and one less day of rental car than I'd planned for, hooray! We run some errands and get home and watch some TV and go get some dinner, and I like hanging out with my brother, even when my sister-in-law is not there (out of town at a friend's birthday party).
Sunday: We are supposed to go see our cousin after lunch, but she e-mails first thing to say her kids are both sick and nobody's slept all weekend and she'll have to cancel. Bummer. And now we have a whole day to kill. I try to call about rearranging my flight, but getting home on Sunday is going to cost me no less than about $250, so no. We watch some more TV and some movies and go to a deli for lunch and run more errands and order pizza for dinner.
Monday: Up early to get to the airport. Get there without a hitch, doze off on the plane, get back to the car and home again no problem, home for a short time before going to get my allergy shot, which as always takes longer than I think it should, and then I get home and finally check in to my work e-mail and will spend the rest of the afternoon dealing with work stuff before heading to rehearsal this evening. At some point I hope I will hit the shower and wash my hair.
I'm on skip=8473625, so I'm not reading all through the backlog.
How was your weekend? :-)
Thursday: Left work 2-ish for a 4:30 flight. Had to run home super-quick and then stop at the curling club also super-quick on the way to the airport. Was checked in with boarding pass in hand and no bags to check, so it was going to be okay to get there 45 minutes before the flight instead of an hour. This was fortunate, because that was the pace I was on.
At about 3:15, I was a little more than five miles from the airport. This is how those five miles break down: I was on I-95 about a mile and a half south of exit 46, which was for I-895, the Harbor Tunnel. Another mile past that was exit 47, which was for I-195, which I intended to take to the airport. The stretch of 195 between 95 and the airport is a little less than three miles long.
Thing was, there had just been a bad, bad accident just before exit 47. I heard about it as I was coming up on the backup behind it, which at the time I joined it was (as we've seen) only a couple of miles long. If this thing had happened five minutes sooner, or I'd heard about it half a mile earlier, I'd have got off 95 at exit 45, which was Route 100, on which I could have got over to the B-W Parkway and to the airport by a different route. By the time I ground to a halt, I was committed to the 195 route, and dudes, remember I said this was about 3:15.
I got to the airport at about 5:10.
Fortunately, in the time I was sitting mostly still, I'd been able to call AirTran and verify that there's no additional charge to fly standby on a same-day flight between the same cities as your ticket, and the girl told me that if I missed the 4:30 there was another flight at 5:30 with plenty of room on it; and if I happened not to get on that one for whatever reason, there was another one at 6:40, so I'd get to Boston on Thursday night, no problem. I also called
ellen_fremedon and then my dad for map-related advice, in which I determined with some confidence that getting off at 895 would not get me to 195 and thus to the airport; and by the time I was done having this conversation with my dad, I could see that the exit sign said "no exit before toll", cementing my confidence that 895 was not the way to go.Anyway. I got to the airport a little after 5, and stopped at the check-in kiosk, where the man said I couldn't get on standby there, it'd have to be at the gate - but, oh, look, the 4:30 flight was delayed and hadn't left yet, and I might be able to get on it after all if I hurried. So I hurried!, and the guy in front of me at security was slow and obstructive enough that I couldn't get my shoes and my laptop and whatnot back together as fast as I'd have liked, and I hurried to gate D5, where the 4:30 flight was leaving from, and the door was closed. Alas. Guy in the waiting area said they'd just closed it, and commiserated for a moment, and then I went to D3, where the 5:30 flight was also delayed, and began with the standby procedure. And the girl was typing and typing and made a face and called on the phone for a supervisor a couple of times and told me there was something strange about my reservation, and it wouldn't let her put me in as standby. Which was indeed weird; and as she was still trying to solve this, they paged me from D3. She handed me back my boarding pass and I ran, and the D3 agent said she'd had to go down to the plane so she'd closed the door behind her, but the flight wasn't quite closed yet, and when she'd come out again the guy in the waiting area had told her there was a passenger trying to catch that plane, so yay! I got on the 4:30 flight.
Which didn't take off until about 5:50, and then got held over Providence because there were windy conditions in Boston, so we didn't land until after 7pm, by which time I should have been halfway to the Cape. Instead of which I picked up the rental car around 7:30 and arrived at Cape Cod Curling Club (which does not have internet) a little after 9:00. Measured the rings, then headed to the hotel and, as there was no internet there either, went straight to bed.
Friday: A two-team event (Cape vs. Seattle) is a piece of cake, I'll tell you what. Team practice at 9:00, team meeting at 10:00, first game at 11:00. Seattle wins handily. Out for some lunch. Back to the club, catch a nap, wake up for the second game 4-ish, game at 5pm, Seattle wins when Cape misses their last shot. A shame for them, but now the best-of-five series is at 2-0 and I begin to think about how I won't be on the Cape forever. Good times at the Irish pub with the site chair Friday night.
Saturday: I check out, because checkout time is 11 and late checkout is 12 and the odds are good that Seattle will win at least one game today, and as soon as they do the event is over, and as soon as the event is over I'm heading to Boston and my brother's place. If it happens that Cape wins both games on Saturday I can crash with the site chair for one night or, worst case, check back in to the hotel; it's Cape Cod in January, it's not like the place is packed.
Seattle is down one coming home with the hammer in the eighth and manages to take only one, so we go to an extra end - which Seattle wins when Cape, that's right, misses their last shot. So that's it, event finished, and it's lunch time on Saturday and I pack up the car and call my brother and say here I come! and hit the road.
I get all the way to Cambridge and then get turned around on the stupid ill-marked roads again, and have to call my brother and have him give me turn-by-turn directions to his place over the phone. That's it: I am buying a GPS. Anyway, when I get there, he and I head out again to the airport to return the rental car, and that's one less night of hotel and one less day of rental car than I'd planned for, hooray! We run some errands and get home and watch some TV and go get some dinner, and I like hanging out with my brother, even when my sister-in-law is not there (out of town at a friend's birthday party).
Sunday: We are supposed to go see our cousin after lunch, but she e-mails first thing to say her kids are both sick and nobody's slept all weekend and she'll have to cancel. Bummer. And now we have a whole day to kill. I try to call about rearranging my flight, but getting home on Sunday is going to cost me no less than about $250, so no. We watch some more TV and some movies and go to a deli for lunch and run more errands and order pizza for dinner.
Monday: Up early to get to the airport. Get there without a hitch, doze off on the plane, get back to the car and home again no problem, home for a short time before going to get my allergy shot, which as always takes longer than I think it should, and then I get home and finally check in to my work e-mail and will spend the rest of the afternoon dealing with work stuff before heading to rehearsal this evening. At some point I hope I will hit the shower and wash my hair.
I'm on skip=8473625, so I'm not reading all through the backlog.
How was your weekend? :-)