It wasn’t all that early and we were stuck in traffic.
George had volunteered to pick me up at SFO. If there is no traffic – oh, let us say about 0300 in the morning (yes, redundant) one can sail to SFO in about 35 minutes from the house, most of which is taken up with getting to/from the freeway. Morning, afternoon or what turns out to be mid-evening? It is a complete other story. As we are sitting at almost a standstill on Hwy 101N headed into all of the San Francisco merges I looked at him.
“I really appreciate you doing this, but…”
“Yes?”
“If I had taken BART, I could already be at North Berkeley….”
Although, it wasn’t like I hadn’t spent time waiting earlier today. Carmen and I had disembarked, then stood in the taxi line. Wisely as it turned out since there was a lot of construction between Pier 88 and Penn Station. Dragging suitcases plus our tired bodies would not have been fun. Miriam met us and hung out in the Amtrak Lounge till it was Carmen’s time to board her train. Then there was lunch followed by my catching a NJ Transport train to Newark. $9 for the train and I was already at Penn vs hiking 8 blocks to the Port Authority Bus station and paying $15 for the train? No brainer there..
Check in was easy, then the pain of getting through TSA followed by waiting for my flight. Add in three hours of time zone change to the almost six hours of in the air time and I was more than ready to greet my very own pillow.
Welcome home!