J and I spent the first part of this week traveling, and it was the first quasi-vacation that we've taken alone together since our honeymoon. James stayed with Nama and Papa (benedicte) and Kylie (benedicte) while we were gone, and I'm not actually sure that he noticed we weren't there. There is a sandbox at Nama's, and once he's in the sand it's hard for him to notice anything else.
I was, as is my custom before auditions, feeling wretched on Sunday morning. We went to our separate churches, came home, and finished loading up our suitcases. We woke James up, bundled him up in multiple layers, and then carried (what felt like) all our earthly possessions to the car. It was snowing pretty hard, so it was a slow drive to N. Chili, where we dropped him off. From there to the airport, onto the airport shuttle, and through an almost empty security line in terminal A of the mighty Rochester International Airport.
ROC isn't terribly crowded even at its busiest moments, but it seemed very nearly abandoned as we played cribbage outside our gate. Our connecting flight to Philadelphia looked like it might be the only departure for the evening, and the two-dozenish travelers who lounged around us were all looking like it was the end, rather than the beginning, of the week. I heard a phone go off, then another, and several other ringtones simultaneously. I noticed my pocket was buzzing, glanced outside at the the thick-falling snow, and said to J "This isn't going to be good news."
It wasn't. Our 5:45 departure was delayed due to icing on a previous flight, and our new time of departure would be 6:30. It takes just about an hour to fly to Philly, and our connecting flight was supposed to leave at 8:30.
"We're probably fine," said J "and more than likely our flight to San Francisco is going to be delayed also."
We meandered past closed and gated shops until we found the only open restaurant in the airport--McDonalds--and enjoyed a lovely and romantic vacation-starting meal. When we got back to our gate we found that our departure was bumped back again, this time to 6:50.
The plane arrived, a tiny regional jet with hardly enough space to swing a kneazle. (I spent most of the plane rides reading Harry Potter 5 and 6.) We squished on board and became intimate with countless human odors hitherto unfamiliar. Once I'd squashed my gig bag under the seat in front of us and successfully hid the protruding end under my lap-coat, we received word from the captain that we'd be pushing back momentarily and making every effort to arrive in Philly in a timely manner.
And then the plane went dark.
Do you know how commercial aircaft are supposed to be some of the safest and most thoroughly regulated and tested examples of engineering in the modern world? Well, apparently you can still accidentally bump the power switch on them. And that is what happened to us. We were in good shape to make it to Philly in time for our connection, and then we waited on the tarmac for 20 minutes while the plane rebooted and powered up. (Apparently US Airways regional jets run on Windows 98, which also did not have record start-up speeds.)
Incidentally, whenever I type the word "tarmac" in my phone it is auto-corrected to a capital T, making for weird texts such as:
R: I'm stuck on the Tarmac at O'Hare, can you text me a revealing picture of yourself?
J: I have never done that once, nor will I ever. Stop asking.
R: I meant "tarmac." Stupid auto-correct.
Anyway, we waited on the "Tarmac" for 20 minutes for the lights to come back on, and then for another 15 while we waited for the runway to be re-plowed. It was 7:25 when we took off.
I reminded myself not to grind my teeth every few minutes while reading Harry Potter, and we touched down in Philly at 8:25, just 10 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave. We then waited for 20 minutes for an open gate.
Our flight to San Francisco was gone before we ever stepped off the plane. There was never a chance. US Airways was dumb about a lot of things over the course of the weekend, but they were good about this: As soon as we stepped off our first flight, they had rebooked tickets printed for us for the next flight out in the morning. And, it turned out that our original flight got re-routed to Kansas City because the snow was so bad. So maybe it worked out okay.
J and I were tired as we weighed our options. We had been given a number to call around for discount hotels, but since our nice romantic hotel in San Francisco was already paid for and non-refundable, we thought perhaps we ought to sleep at the airport that night. The volume and song selection of the airport music made the Days Inn Philadelphia an easy choice. We rode a swerving shuttle (think the Knight Bus...again, it was a Harry Potter filled trip) out to Springfield, watched the last ten minutes of the Pro Bowl, and immediately collapsed on what turned out to be a perfectly comfortable king-sized bed.
Here is the update from this year's Pro Bowl:
Al Michaels: Well, from the way that kicker just completed the extra point try you can tell that this year is really different and that the players are trying much harder than they have in the past. If you watch the replay, you'll see that the Coach Rivera actually put down his Mai-Tai to adjust his headset before calling the play in. Clearly, he really wants to win this game.
Chris Collinsworth: Yeah, and this player is sort of unknown and underrated, even though he made it to the Pro Bowl and is a millionaire, and plays for either Dallas, New York, San Francisco or New England.
We woke up in time for the 6 AM shuttle back, checked through the security lines again, and then took our seats two rows apart on the six hour flight to San Francisco. Fortunately our luck began to turn here, and a kind man offered to switch with me so that I could sit next to J. (Seriously, this guy was a saint--I was in the very back row next to the lavatory. On a six-hour flight.) I then proceeded to not think about sick and nervous I was for the next six hours as we took off at 7:30 and and landed at 10:30 thanks to the magic of time zones. Breakfast that morning had been half of a fruit smoothie at the airport, and a bagel. J was a saint through the whole process, and didn't complain once as we took the smelly subway to the hall.
There isn't much to say about the audition. The staff was fine with me arriving late, they were very helpful through the whole round, and I ended up playing a good first round. I didn't advance, which was too bad. But that meant that we were free in San Francisco. In the city by the bay, my beautiful young wife and I had left our child and all our worldly responsibilities behind for 36 whole hours. It was 60 degrees out an sunny, and the day was ours.
"Let's go back to the hotel room and take a nap."
"Sounds great."
We checked in at the Fitzgeral Hotel in Union Square, and they were great to us. They refunded us the unused night (although they weren't obliged to do so) gave us great information about what to do in the city, and provided a lovely eclectic style room with a teensy-weensy television and a great view of the city. We sacked out for a few hours and woke up at about 5 PM real time (2 PM fake time) and walked down to Union Square, the fashionable shopping/retail district of San Francisco. We poked around a seven floor Macy's looking for food, and found a Cheesecake Factory on the top floor overlooking the square. To anyone who is judging us for eating at a restaurant that is less than a block away from our real house, WHATEVER because we were outside on the seventh floor looking over the city and watching pigeons steal people's food, and we had a great time. We hadn't eaten since breakfast (6 AM real time) and the crab dip, fish tacos, martini, and hamburger were amazing.
We walked around the square a bit more as it failed to get dark out at the appropriate time and balked at many prices. I accidentally knocked down a big sign in a three-story Old Navy, and we touched lots of things at a huge Apple store that we saw a picture of in the news the next day. We were back to the hotel by 7 PM fake time completely exhausted.
It was unbelievably cool to wake up at 6:30 fake time the next morning having slept for almost 12 hours, the air already warm, and the sun just starting to rise. We had breakfast at the hotel (complimentary Nutella, thank you very much) and were out on the streets even before the morning rush of men-in-suits-talking-on-cellphones. We played more cribbage at a Starbucks while we waited for shops to open, then did some clothing shopping, bought super fancy chocolate to bring home, and looked through rows and rows of jewelry. We did Thai for lunch, checked out of the hotel--they were kind enough to let us store our luggage there while we explored in the afternoon--and then set our for Fisherman's Wharf.
This was maybe the only really dumb decision that we made, although I still think it was kind of worth it. We decided to walk up to the Wharf instead of taking the bus, so that we could save a little money, get some exercise, and also see a little bit of Chinatown up close. It turns out that Fisherman's Wharf is pretty darn far away when you are going up and down hills the entire time. I used to walk a half an hour each way in grad school to go into classes, and I don't remember feeling as sore then as I did that afternoon. Still, we got to see some really amazing authentic Chinese architecture, decoration, and pornography shops, so the walk was pretty much worth it.
Once we arrived at the harbor we saw the incredibly loud sea lion colony, tons of seafood shops, lots of touristy t-shirts, and of course several spectacular views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. We did our touristy things and browsed around, and walked as far up as Ghirardelli square. We called James (who wasn't really interested in us), ate some seafood, and enjoyed the sun. It was lovely. It was amazing. We talked and laughed and didn't worry about who was going to take which car where or what time the other would be home. It was fantastic, and it made me realize why people spend so much money to go on vacations. But it only lasted for so long, and then we needed to catch a flight.
We rode a trolley car back to the square, picked up a few souvenirs, and then gathered our bags. It felt really late even by the time that we arrived at the airport, and then it was a long wait for an 11:00 (that's 2 AM real time, although we were already losing track of that) flight back across the country. We slept poorly, but we made it into Philly, and when we stepped outside to catch the terminal shuttle it was like getting slapped in the face by a winter-demon. There was another weather delay on our flight back, but our little 2-prop regional jet made it home, and we traipsed through the crunchy snow back to the terminal, out into the parking lot, and into our salt-stained dirty PT Cruiser.
Vacation is over now, but it was wonderful. And it won't be six years before the next time J and I get away together.
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