The Long-Awaited Vacation

Well, okay, the four hours of sleep last night wasn't, perhaps, easy, but it's not the hardest thing I've ever done. It's always kind of a bummer to get up before the sun rises, much less two-plus hours before it rises, at 4:45 am. But hey.

I called a cab to take me to the San Jose airport to begin my holiday vacation. (As you may have noticed, I don't make a big deal of when I'm going away on my vacations in my journal - for obvious reasons.) Although in the grand scheme of Bay Area things, I live pretty close to the airport, the cab fare was still rather steep - twenty bucks! - so next time I might look at the prices of long-term parking (assuming I can't find someone to give me a lift).

I arrived at the airport just over an hour before my flight, because the news had been saying that the tighter security checks (due to fears of terrorist attacks during this holiday season) would make things even slower at check-in. Well, it seems I needn't have worried, since it took me about five minutes to get from the cab to my gate. Amazing!

One help here might have been that Lucy - who got me my tickets - also had some first-class upgrade passes, so I got to check in first-class. To my complete surprise, they didn't even ask for my ID (which I had ready), but simply checked my luggage and gave me my boarding pass.

I had made it a priority to get a direct flight, so everything else was easy: I bought some apple juice and sat reading while I waited for the plane to board. Flights on Christmas Eve were rather underbooked (I heard that a month before or more airlines were cancelling flights on that day) so getting on the plane was easy enough. And then we took off.

Yes, it was as easy as that. And first class is definitely the way to fly. The wider seats and extra legroom make all the difference for us tall, long-legged folks. The food - a little to my surprise - wasn't markedly better than in coach (I've always thought that protests of airline food were perhaps a little overblown; if the salads were a little fresher, they'd be fine), but there was more of it, with hot cookies near the end of the trip.

I had a little trouble finding my bag when I landed in Boston - it wasn't clear which carousel my flight's luggage would come out on - but otherwise the trip continued smoothly. I took the shuttle bus to the T. The T, by the way, is Boston's mass transit system, which includes a good subway system which I've made good use of since I was a young teenager. I caught trains almost immediately and got out to my Mom's house in short order. Very convenient.

Oh, and it turns out that my blood has not thinned out much during my year in California: I walked home thinking that I was holding up pretty well in the mid-30s weather, and it turns out it was a little under 20 that evening! Zoiks!

I've been looking forward to this vacation for a while - I've barely taken any time off at all since last Christmas. Mom suggested it to me a little before Thanksgiving when I was whining about being unhappy with my apartment, etc. etc., so I decided to get tickets. Lining up people to watch my cats was a bit challenging since, as I've said, I live some distance south of most of my friends. But Jenn kindly offered to watch them for part of my trip, and my cow-orker Tom was willing for the other part. I thank them both greatly for helping make this possible (and I left them a little Ghirardelli chocolate next to the cat food in thanks).