Trip to California

Our Trip to California

California was wonderful. I'm tempted to move back. Getting there, however, was quite a trial.

We arrived at Little Rock airport about 5:45 am for our 6:55 am flight to Dallas/Ft. Worth. There had been severe storms all night long, but it seemed to have cleared by the time we got to the airport. However, it seems that there were still storms between Little Rock and Dallas, and we had to wait for our captain to reroute us around them. Then they found a mechanical problem in our plane. By this time the passengers for the second flight to Dallas had begun to arrive. When it became apparent we wouldn't make our connection in Dallas for San Jose, we called the airline and rebooked a later flight to San Jose. They started boarding the 8:30 flight, but brought them back when we were told that DFW was closed. So we rebooked again. We couldn't get a flight to San Jose until Friday morning, so we instead booked ourselves on a flight to San Francisco. (SFO had been our first choice when we were originally booking our flights; that itinerary would have been several hundred dollars more for the three of us.) Finally, at 12:05 pm we boarded our flight to DFW. They promised our luggage would also be rerouted to SFO (yeah, right).

The flight to DFW was fine. We had a nice lunch in the airport and waited for our flight to SFO. That flight was delayed about an hour and a half, but no big deal, we thought. The flight was fully booked (more than 70 passengers on the stand-by list by the time we boarded), and we were seated separately. I slept most of the way to SFO.

Our luggage did not make it to San Francisco. It was in San Jose. Our pre-paid rental car was in San Jose.

The luggage office at San Jose would close at 11 pm. The next Airporter bus to San Jose left at 10 pm. It was a 45 minute trip.

We got to San Jose just in time to rescue our luggage. The rental car office would be open until midnight, and we managed to get there just before they closed.

When we left San Jose for Santa Rosa it was a good 12 hours after we were originally scheduled to arrive in San Jose.

The weekend was wonderful. The wine tasting, rehersal dinner and the wedding all were phenomenal, and we had a chance to get to know Ken's family better. We visited Jack London State Park (which encompasses his ranch and the home where he and his wife lived) and Coit Tower. We drove around San Francisco before a superb dinner at Alioto's (thank you, Natalie!) and heading back to San Jose. Our flights home were on time and uneventful. The photo on the left is the Golden Gate from Land's End; the one on the right is the Bay Bridge and Ferry Building from Coit Tower.

What I'm Reading
Grave Peril by Jim Butcher (#3 Dresden Files)

What I'm Knitting
Prototype stole with Red Heart Super Saver.
Skirt with Takhi Torino (for Mom).

Where I'm Going
Arkansas Writers Conference, first weekend in June, in Little Rock.

Vacation's over; back to work tonight.