Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2013-09-28 01:31 am
azurelunatic) wrote2013-09-28 01:31 am
Entry tags:
Alaska! Weekend, early week, and a plane ride. Or two.
The first part of the trip:
I spent the weekend engaged in random acts of tidying (and packing). I got my suitcases down, and a halo of baggage-like objects accreted upon it. I also put away hella laundry, threw out random things I didn't need, transcribed some journal pages from the last time I was flying about the country, and attempted to consolidate my preparations in some sort of meaningful way.
I tried to tie up some loose ends at work on Monday and Tuesday. These efforts were ... perhaps a little incoherent in places. (Ongoing situations include my grandmanager, of whom I am no little personally fond although occasionally professionally agitated about, falling very suddenly and unexpectedly ill; we're of course holding him in our thoughts, but ALSO TRYING TO SCRAMBLE TO FILL IN THE THINGS THAT HE'S DOING; my part in this was limited, but since I needed the advice and counsel of my direct manager, I had to vy for her time with everyone else vying for the time of one of the people filling in for, and perhaps holding backup knowledge belonging to, my grandmanager.)
I scrammed out of work early-ish on Tuesday, going from thence to Costco, whereupon I secured for myself a pair of coldshoes, and a fragrant selection of dudesocks. I realized shortly after rolling in to home that packing was going to take until seriously late in the night, and thus I would be good for absolutely nothing in the morning. Therefore, I had damn well better make use of my late-night packing to ensure that my morning would require me to put clothing on my body, put food in my body, bring with me the last few items that I absolutely could not pack until the last minute, and then get myself and my bags and baggage into my aunt's vehicle. My Overlady ordered me to not drive across the FAI runway. It's like she knows me or something. :D
Rather late the night before, my aunt pinged me to alter the arrangements we had already made: instead of picking me up at 8:15, she re-estimated the time and thought 7:30 would be better. I acquiesced, this easing some of my own uneasiness.
We were glad of the extra time, as traffic was gnarly. Instead of dropping me off at the curb as she'd previously contemplated, we both went to long-term parking, and caught the shuttle from there.
Checking in was a little fraught for me, as I'd packed my bags wrong. The one that was too large for carry-on had my carry-on stuff in it. So I sat myself down on one of the seats and proceeded to switch stuff between bags. There was swearing. Quietly. My aunt joined me and helped out.
Then there was a little to-do as the check-in lady looked at me and decided that I was possibly too fat to fly. She said something which I didn't hear properly, and I allowed as how it was more comfortable for me if there was no one in the adjacent seat. There were enough gaps in the SF to Seattle flight that she was able to block off the seat next to me, but she warned me that the Seattle to Fairbanks flight was another story, and she was not able to do that; if it turned out that I needed another seat, I might have been required to buy another ticket. (It turned out OK; crucially, I am in fact able to sit in an Alaska Airlines seat with both arms down.)
Having discussed that in enough detail to petrify me, I went through security. I prefer the magnetometer. I can walk unsupported briefly (longer than in 2011) and as it turns out, the pornoscanners look claustrophobic as hell for a person of my size. When the TSA dude asked why I did not want the pornoscanner, I just said "I prefer it", and he advised me that this meant a freedom grope, and I should go sit the hell down over there. This meant a chair which some other random person set his bag on just as I approached, and several of us waited for various officers to get the time to see to our various and diverse needs.
The pat-down was unexceptional as these things go. I rejoined my aunt, who had taken the opportunity to hit the bathroom.
What turned out to be exceptional were the scumbags we sat down next to at the gate. They were headed to Alaska on a hunting trip, and the conversation took all sorts of interesting turns. One of the items involved some business venture of one of the guys, which hinged on his buddy on some safety-related committee corruptly granting him clearance to do a thing for which no clearance should be given. (The "for which no clearance should be given" was implied, very strongly, but not gone into in any depth.) However, said buddy had encountered a scandal, and this scandal had resulted in his (the buddy's) resignation from the committee. The scandal was that the buddy had been arrested for felony assault. From further details, it sounds like it was this guy -- purple belt, and all of the other details jive with either what they said in the particulars, or what they said about the particulars. One of the questions involved whether or not the wife in question had "deserved it"; that saw me screaming about the slime on Twitter. My aunt had a few choice comments which she whispered to me as well. We were trying to figure out how to best evoke "douchebag" or "slime" in gestures when fortunately the gate agent made a call for gate-checked carry-ons due to the full flight.
After a bit more juggling, I opted to gate-check the bag all the way to Fairbanks. This would later prove very helpful.
I listened to stray podcasts and crocheted most of the flight to Seattle. My aunt was across the aisle, but there's only so much talking you can get done on the airplane. I had brought analog books and she had not, and she had to turn off her iPad for takeoff. It is a testament to how much I like her that I asked if she would like to borrow my (unread!) book. Which she did.
There was a delay out the gate. Only two runways in all of SFO were open, for whatever reason, so there was this line of airplanes marching for a liftoff spot. It was comical, and would have been more so if we hadn't had a bit of a tight connection. Midair, as it became apparent that we would be landing late, I asked a flight attendant if he knew what gate our connecting flight was on in relation to where we'd be landing. We were to be landing in C; the connecting flight was in N. He said to run for the escalator, hop the tram, and then race like hell. I relayed this to my aunt in dubious accents. I kept track of the time and saw when the threshold had passed. "New plan: seek out gate agent and rebook," I suggested. While there had still been some doubt about whether we were going to be in time to make the run, I bit the bullet and did the thing I'd been hoping to avoid doing: I used the bathroom on the plane.
Reader, those things are small. It was not pleasant. It was barely physically possible. I have seen worse -- there's a nice little restaurant in the Mission where the sink physically blocks access to the toilet, and I cannot use it at all. That was worse. This is still bad.
Guide Dog Aunt finished the book and handed it back; I was still on podcasts, crocheting merrily away on Dreamsheep Beta. The end was in sight! I kept carefully placing hemispheres. I swapped it out for my phone (which I'd thoughtfully placed in airplane mode before turning off) and caught up on Twitter.
When we landed, they had a surprise in store for us. There were agents in orange vests waiting in the jetway, and those of us on that flight (four: me, my aunt, and two dudes who spoke mostly Chinese) were hustled down stairs (ow) into a van (oh my), and whisked across the tarmac to the plane waiting at the N terminal. I made my usual polite request for a seat belt extension, and we scrambled for our seats. I caught sight of Uncle Davy first, then Aunt-Fayoumis, and then Uncle-Fayoumis as well, and waved as we flailed past. Guide Dog Aunt sat down in her row next to some tall dude, with a woman with short and ferally wavy brown hair and hip glasses in the window seat.
There were actually fewer people on this flight than the last, so when the flight attendant asked that row if anyone wanted to move, the dude in the middle was a taker. My aunt was not, and the woman in the window seat was not. At which point I realized that the woman in the window seat was in fact my sister Tay.
Tay had also not brought a book for the no-electronics portion of the flight. MY FILIAL PIETY KNOWS FEW BOUNDS. Tay got to borrow my book. I continued with dreamsheep and nightvale.
There was discussion of the dreamsheep. There was discussion of sheep fisting. The lady behind me couldn't get something open, and my scissors came into play. (Less than four inch blades, woo!) A good time was had by most.
We landed, again uneventfully. We collected our baggage and the rental car. We learned from last time: I was added as second driver. There was a bit of a moment when the ignition had locked and I wasn't sure how to make it not lock (oh Toyotas) but Guide Dog Aunt got it going. She drove us to the curb where she leaped out and went in search of her missing directions; no sooner had I gained the driver's seat than she came zipping back, having found them in her coat pocket.
I drove us to the hotel, missing only one turn (and knowing how to get back where we were going, more or less). We checked in. Aunt-Fayoumis and Tay were planning to stay with my parents; Uncle-Fayoumis had been going to join them, but after seeing the weather forecast, he booked himself a hotel room. (The things we learn from our previous errors.) Tay got a shower. We took advantage of the indoor plumbing. Then we headed to my parents' place.
Dinner occurred. Eventually, we headed back to the hotel, where I was absolutely head-poundingly exhausted, but needed to get the computer set up to check in on work.
I fell asleep after that was done, and slept the sleep of the justly exhausted -- until about 1am, when I woke the fuck up and couldn't get back to sleep what with Not My Pillows, the too-warm room, and my stupid sinuses, until about 3am.
And evening and morning were the first day.
I spent the weekend engaged in random acts of tidying (and packing). I got my suitcases down, and a halo of baggage-like objects accreted upon it. I also put away hella laundry, threw out random things I didn't need, transcribed some journal pages from the last time I was flying about the country, and attempted to consolidate my preparations in some sort of meaningful way.
I tried to tie up some loose ends at work on Monday and Tuesday. These efforts were ... perhaps a little incoherent in places. (Ongoing situations include my grandmanager, of whom I am no little personally fond although occasionally professionally agitated about, falling very suddenly and unexpectedly ill; we're of course holding him in our thoughts, but ALSO TRYING TO SCRAMBLE TO FILL IN THE THINGS THAT HE'S DOING; my part in this was limited, but since I needed the advice and counsel of my direct manager, I had to vy for her time with everyone else vying for the time of one of the people filling in for, and perhaps holding backup knowledge belonging to, my grandmanager.)
I scrammed out of work early-ish on Tuesday, going from thence to Costco, whereupon I secured for myself a pair of coldshoes, and a fragrant selection of dudesocks. I realized shortly after rolling in to home that packing was going to take until seriously late in the night, and thus I would be good for absolutely nothing in the morning. Therefore, I had damn well better make use of my late-night packing to ensure that my morning would require me to put clothing on my body, put food in my body, bring with me the last few items that I absolutely could not pack until the last minute, and then get myself and my bags and baggage into my aunt's vehicle. My Overlady ordered me to not drive across the FAI runway. It's like she knows me or something. :D
Rather late the night before, my aunt pinged me to alter the arrangements we had already made: instead of picking me up at 8:15, she re-estimated the time and thought 7:30 would be better. I acquiesced, this easing some of my own uneasiness.
We were glad of the extra time, as traffic was gnarly. Instead of dropping me off at the curb as she'd previously contemplated, we both went to long-term parking, and caught the shuttle from there.
Checking in was a little fraught for me, as I'd packed my bags wrong. The one that was too large for carry-on had my carry-on stuff in it. So I sat myself down on one of the seats and proceeded to switch stuff between bags. There was swearing. Quietly. My aunt joined me and helped out.
Then there was a little to-do as the check-in lady looked at me and decided that I was possibly too fat to fly. She said something which I didn't hear properly, and I allowed as how it was more comfortable for me if there was no one in the adjacent seat. There were enough gaps in the SF to Seattle flight that she was able to block off the seat next to me, but she warned me that the Seattle to Fairbanks flight was another story, and she was not able to do that; if it turned out that I needed another seat, I might have been required to buy another ticket. (It turned out OK; crucially, I am in fact able to sit in an Alaska Airlines seat with both arms down.)
Having discussed that in enough detail to petrify me, I went through security. I prefer the magnetometer. I can walk unsupported briefly (longer than in 2011) and as it turns out, the pornoscanners look claustrophobic as hell for a person of my size. When the TSA dude asked why I did not want the pornoscanner, I just said "I prefer it", and he advised me that this meant a freedom grope, and I should go sit the hell down over there. This meant a chair which some other random person set his bag on just as I approached, and several of us waited for various officers to get the time to see to our various and diverse needs.
The pat-down was unexceptional as these things go. I rejoined my aunt, who had taken the opportunity to hit the bathroom.
What turned out to be exceptional were the scumbags we sat down next to at the gate. They were headed to Alaska on a hunting trip, and the conversation took all sorts of interesting turns. One of the items involved some business venture of one of the guys, which hinged on his buddy on some safety-related committee corruptly granting him clearance to do a thing for which no clearance should be given. (The "for which no clearance should be given" was implied, very strongly, but not gone into in any depth.) However, said buddy had encountered a scandal, and this scandal had resulted in his (the buddy's) resignation from the committee. The scandal was that the buddy had been arrested for felony assault. From further details, it sounds like it was this guy -- purple belt, and all of the other details jive with either what they said in the particulars, or what they said about the particulars. One of the questions involved whether or not the wife in question had "deserved it"; that saw me screaming about the slime on Twitter. My aunt had a few choice comments which she whispered to me as well. We were trying to figure out how to best evoke "douchebag" or "slime" in gestures when fortunately the gate agent made a call for gate-checked carry-ons due to the full flight.
After a bit more juggling, I opted to gate-check the bag all the way to Fairbanks. This would later prove very helpful.
I listened to stray podcasts and crocheted most of the flight to Seattle. My aunt was across the aisle, but there's only so much talking you can get done on the airplane. I had brought analog books and she had not, and she had to turn off her iPad for takeoff. It is a testament to how much I like her that I asked if she would like to borrow my (unread!) book. Which she did.
There was a delay out the gate. Only two runways in all of SFO were open, for whatever reason, so there was this line of airplanes marching for a liftoff spot. It was comical, and would have been more so if we hadn't had a bit of a tight connection. Midair, as it became apparent that we would be landing late, I asked a flight attendant if he knew what gate our connecting flight was on in relation to where we'd be landing. We were to be landing in C; the connecting flight was in N. He said to run for the escalator, hop the tram, and then race like hell. I relayed this to my aunt in dubious accents. I kept track of the time and saw when the threshold had passed. "New plan: seek out gate agent and rebook," I suggested. While there had still been some doubt about whether we were going to be in time to make the run, I bit the bullet and did the thing I'd been hoping to avoid doing: I used the bathroom on the plane.
Reader, those things are small. It was not pleasant. It was barely physically possible. I have seen worse -- there's a nice little restaurant in the Mission where the sink physically blocks access to the toilet, and I cannot use it at all. That was worse. This is still bad.
Guide Dog Aunt finished the book and handed it back; I was still on podcasts, crocheting merrily away on Dreamsheep Beta. The end was in sight! I kept carefully placing hemispheres. I swapped it out for my phone (which I'd thoughtfully placed in airplane mode before turning off) and caught up on Twitter.
When we landed, they had a surprise in store for us. There were agents in orange vests waiting in the jetway, and those of us on that flight (four: me, my aunt, and two dudes who spoke mostly Chinese) were hustled down stairs (ow) into a van (oh my), and whisked across the tarmac to the plane waiting at the N terminal. I made my usual polite request for a seat belt extension, and we scrambled for our seats. I caught sight of Uncle Davy first, then Aunt-Fayoumis, and then Uncle-Fayoumis as well, and waved as we flailed past. Guide Dog Aunt sat down in her row next to some tall dude, with a woman with short and ferally wavy brown hair and hip glasses in the window seat.
There were actually fewer people on this flight than the last, so when the flight attendant asked that row if anyone wanted to move, the dude in the middle was a taker. My aunt was not, and the woman in the window seat was not. At which point I realized that the woman in the window seat was in fact my sister Tay.
Tay had also not brought a book for the no-electronics portion of the flight. MY FILIAL PIETY KNOWS FEW BOUNDS. Tay got to borrow my book. I continued with dreamsheep and nightvale.
There was discussion of the dreamsheep. There was discussion of sheep fisting. The lady behind me couldn't get something open, and my scissors came into play. (Less than four inch blades, woo!) A good time was had by most.
We landed, again uneventfully. We collected our baggage and the rental car. We learned from last time: I was added as second driver. There was a bit of a moment when the ignition had locked and I wasn't sure how to make it not lock (oh Toyotas) but Guide Dog Aunt got it going. She drove us to the curb where she leaped out and went in search of her missing directions; no sooner had I gained the driver's seat than she came zipping back, having found them in her coat pocket.
I drove us to the hotel, missing only one turn (and knowing how to get back where we were going, more or less). We checked in. Aunt-Fayoumis and Tay were planning to stay with my parents; Uncle-Fayoumis had been going to join them, but after seeing the weather forecast, he booked himself a hotel room. (The things we learn from our previous errors.) Tay got a shower. We took advantage of the indoor plumbing. Then we headed to my parents' place.
Dinner occurred. Eventually, we headed back to the hotel, where I was absolutely head-poundingly exhausted, but needed to get the computer set up to check in on work.
I fell asleep after that was done, and slept the sleep of the justly exhausted -- until about 1am, when I woke the fuck up and couldn't get back to sleep what with Not My Pillows, the too-warm room, and my stupid sinuses, until about 3am.
And evening and morning were the first day.
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I'm glad to hear you got to Alaska safely and without having to pay for extra seats on the airlines. Stay warm and safe and have lots of fun! And keep updating us! ;) *fishpile*
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Staying warm will not be a problem. I have many coats and the hotel is well heated. Very well heated. Fortunately, it is also air conditioned, and thus can be rendered cool enough to sleep.
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Aha. And I suspect the required position involves not falling on your face or ass for at least three seconds, if not longer.
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Yup, exactly. In the past year or so, I've definitely seen a ton more TSA people who are just as eye-rolly about the security theatre as I am start Broadly Hinting at people...
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Glad things are going well. I hope they continue to do so.
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I hope so too. I may or may not take a nap this afternoon...
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Finished the dreamsheep, avoided awkward conversations.
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