redkanga

I’ve been sent to San Francisco for work. More accurately, a training class for CA Brightstor ARCserve (mouthful, isn’t it?). The arrangements were made by one of the departments executive assistants. Flight on United, rental car with Budget, and a room at the Homewood Suites by Hilton.

So this is how the trip up went. The ticketing lines at LAX for United were insane. It took me almost 30 minutes to get from curb through the line. I got my E-Ticket (funny… at Disneyland, an E-Ticket used to be fun), and headed for the gate. I made it through the security checkpoint with minimal hassle - I had to take my belt off because the screener was sure that it was causing the metal detector to go off. I made it easily through security at Salt Lake City with a similar belt. I was pretty sure it was my watch that I forgot to take off. Oh well… I made it to the gate as they were calling my name to trade my E-Ticket for a boarding pass. Moments later, they started boarding.

I got on the plane and found that I was seated between two gentlemen that were about my size. Very comfortable in the smaller than normal seats that United has. I wonder if there is a website out there with seat widths for Economy class on various major airlines. Anyhow… we all got seated, and the plane taxied out to the runway. We sat on the runway for a few minutes past our scheduled departure time of 4pm. Then the pilot announced that we had to return to the terminal to check out some mechanical problems. OK… good thinking… check that out before we leave.

So, back at the terminal the flight crew calls a passenger to speak with “United Airlines personnel”. Sounds menacing. Turns out that a guy in the row in front of me popped up on one of those “watch lists” that the DHS has. After he made it back to his seat, he made a comment about how he had been trying for 3 years to get of that list and that he was only on it since he was a civilian pilot. Hmmm… or maybe he is an Air Marshall, or maybe he is really a terrorist and not a middle-aged white guy. My uncle is a civilian pilot and my aunt says that he has never come up on a watch list.

I landed very close to 6:30 pm. I left the terminal, waited for my baggage and headed to the rental car terminal. For a larger airport, SFO is laid out pretty well. Add to that it’s awesome transportation system (much, much better than LAX) and I was quite happy to be leaving the rental car terminal at around 7:00 pm. My hotel is only a short drive from the airport and I finally got to my room, uneventfully at around 7:30 pm.

I made my “I’ve arrived safely at my destination” calls, then called my aunt and uncle’s to see if they would they would still be up if I came up. They said come on up and they had food for me!!! I made the drive to Vacaville and visited with my aunt and uncle, my grandmother (who lives with them) and my aunt who is down visiting from Vancouver, B.C. I had good time visiting with them and plan to go back up there tomorrow night (Tuesday) to visit more.

Tonight, after my class, I drove in to San Francisco and wandered around China Town and Union Square. San Francisco is an amazing city and it is nice to see people walking around a city center. In Long Beach, I don’t always feel safe walking around in the same kind of places that I was walking around here in San Francisco tonight. I wish that Long Beach and Los Angeles had a friendlier feeling.