Is not strangely colored dirt. It is a town in southern Minnesota, about 200 km SW of the Twin Cities.
Now, to start at the beginning. Said beginning was before 0430. George was kind enough to drop me off at BART. 0503 is the first Red Line to SFO Airport. There is an earlier train involving a change at MacArthur – but that change actually occurs later than just waiting the extra five minutes at NB for the Red Line. Clear? Never mind, only of concern to someone in my neighborhood.
Then the airport. Got a printed boarding pass as a backup, then cleared security. Unlike the International Terminal, there was almost no one going through the security for this particular set of gates – five minutes all told including putting my jacket back on. Coffee/scone and wait.
United clearly announced that there was limited overhead space on this flight and 40 bags was going to be the limit. Plane capacity is seriously more than that. They offered to check bags for free. Maybe three people took them up on it.
Boarding started. By the time they were mostly through Group 2, they were denying rolling bags. So all of groups 2-5 got bags checked. And people looked so amazed when they got to the check point and were handed a baggage tag with the information that the cabin attendants weren’t letting any more large bags on the plane. (note, I saw the cabin attendants turn back three people who tried it anyway.) Upshot was that there was actually some over head space in the far back of the plane for those us stuck in the rear.
Small screaming baby girl across the isle from me – having noise cancelling head sets is wonderful. I listened to the start of the new Mary Roach b0ok – Replaceable You. and knit.
MSP (Twin Cities airport) is so different from what I remember. I managed to finally locate my rental car desk (there is a train between the terminals – who knew?) and took the shuttle to the car lot. Easy peasy – and this is a locally owned and operated company, not one of the chains) – then hit the road for Blue Earth.
And all these town signs – almost all were familiar. At one point I probably knew someone who was from each of them. Or who had gone to school there, or dealt with a company headquartered there. South on 35W, west on I90… and there we are in Blue Earth.
It has been a long day. Sleep is required.
