Back Home Again

We're back from California. The trip was good, though the travel was a bit more arduous this time. I know there are plenty of jaded folks who travel all the time on business and have had every possible thing happen to them. It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't great either.

The first leg of our flight, from Green Airport in Rhode Island to Chicago, was one of the bumpiest flights I've ever been on, and we were in a 737, not some little prop-putter (that would come on the way home, ha). I had a crying baby directly in front of me and an extra-wide person to my left whose right thigh was taking up some of my seat as well. Oh, and this was my first time (and if I have any choice in it, my last) flying Southwest, with their charmingly low-rent non-system of not assigning seats, so I got stuck in a middle seat, and the Mrs. got the middle seat directly behind me. When we had arrived at the gate and deciphered Southwest's needlessly arcane boarding sequence, the Mrs. said to me, "I think we could have checked in online and gotten a better spot in the line." Oh.

It was raining in Chicago, so the landing was kinda rough, and it seemed like we were going way too fast when we hit the runway. But that flight was only two hours, so it was over soon enough. After we pushed back from the gate for the remaining leg, the rain kept us sitting on the approach lane for about 25 minutes before we were cleared to take off again, but after that, the rest of the flight to San Jose was mercifully uneventful. We were closer to the front of the boarding line this time, and somehow we were able to score a pair of seats together only five rows back from the exit door, so we were out quickly once we'd reached the gate.

After a brief restroom stop we proceeded downstairs to the baggage claim, and to Southwest's credit, the baggage was already hitting the carousel, and somehow, my bag was among the first dozen or so to emerge from the chute. (The Mrs. had chosen not to check her bag.) Someone was out there hustling those bags off the plane.

San Jose is one of those airports that is constantly under construction, and the rental car facilities, which used to be right in the lower levels of the central parking structure, are now located in a satellite lot. Getting there involves walking the length of the garage, crossing the access road, and getting on a shuttle. The shuttle goes around to the other terminal, then takes a long, leisurely cruise to the far reaches of the airport property, crosses a little bridge, and then cruises for another three minutes or so to get all the way around the outer perimeter of the various lots to pull up to the building with the agencies' service counters. Fortunately, the late hour meant that there was no line, so having touched down at 10:30 PM Pacific time, it was still only 11:00 when we drove off in the rental.

Travel tip: if you are arriving at your destination at a late hour and are picking up a rental car, you're going to get the bottom of the barrel in terms of car choice. I did not fully realize this until we were returning the car, and saw that the people ahead of us returning compacts were unloading a shiny, if somewhat awkward-looking, Nissan Sentra, and a brand-new 2009 Toyota Corolla. Neither of these cars is exciting, but either one would have been more pleasant. For us, there were only two compacts left, a Dodge Caliber (a funny-looking tall hatchback thing that replaced the craptacular Neon) and a Chevrolet Cobalt (an incredibly dull sedan that replaced the craptacular Cavalier). The decision was made for us when the Mrs. noticed that the Caliber had crank windows. The poor lot dude stuck on night duty had already started to fill out the paperwork for the Dodge, but she made him switch us to the Chevy.

(Notice that these mediocre cars are from American companies? Just saying. The nicest rental we've had was a Hyundai.)

We arrived at our ultimate destination at about 11:45, but in the deep, densely wooded darkness of the Santa Cruz hills, we could not find the house itself. A couple of U-turns and another run up the hill revealed that we simply hadn't gone far enough up the road: there, on a little green outbuilding, was one of those huge metal signs you order from a catalog, with the number and name of the street, with a light angled onto it. The house itself was on the opposite side of the road, but it was the same shade of green as the shed, so we knew we were in the right place.