4 posts tagged “airport”

Leave to pick the wife up at the airport in 30 minutes.

The 8 month old is already cranky, having played with her older sister instead of napping all afternoon.

And now, now she gets to ride in her car-seat for an hour to the airport and then an hour ride back home.

The car-seat mind you, is her least favorite object, possibly in her entire known universe.

I think it's the straps that get her.

This little girl just doesn't want to be fenced in, restrained, or held back by anything.

Thankfully the VW Passat stereo system really does "go to 11".

That way I can drown out the angry tidal wave of sound coming from behind me.

Then its with the wife again, and not just me with the kids, ooh, ooh, and Heroes replays tonight, and the new
Doctor Who is on after.

We should get home just after both have finished recording, so we can plop down and have couple-time, seperately, together watching our shows.

I love Friday date-night.

So, the wife flew into Seattle today and got a cab from the airport to her downtown hotel.

This trip has always been around $25 in recent memory, a flat fare from the airport to anywhere downtown.

This time, possibly due to the dusting of snow in Seattle, there were very few cabs cuing up at the airport.

This caused a huge line of passengers waiting for ground transport.

My wife split a cab with three other people all going downtown to speed things up.

The cabbie, bless his capitalist-though-foreign-born heart, charged each of the three of them $45 for the fare.

At least Seattle cabbies take credit card, so you don't have to lug around a ton of cash with you.

My wife had a flight out to Boulder via Denver this evening.

7PM

Which meant picking her up from work and driving down to the airport in rush traffic, and then turning around to come back up, still in rush traffic the other direction.

Uncharacteristically, we made it to the airport, even in rush traffic, in an hour and three minutes.

Yeah, VW.

My record, off-peak, no-traffic is forty-eight mintues.

I was certain that the way back up to our house would more than make up for it.

But again, no, I was exiting the freeway onto our nearest surface streets in another hour and five minutes since dropping the wife off at the terminal.

I felt like I'd somehow, through no talent of my own, just dodged a falling two-ton heavy thing.

Then I saw the lights ahead.

The flashy kind.

Red and Blue.

Lots of Red and White

Even a couple of Orange.

Cresting a hill I could see the solid mile of brakelights between me and the emergency vehicles on the crest of the next hill.

Traffic was only getting by in one lane, in alternating directions at the command of one of the deputies on the scene.

It was absolutely disgusting.

Of course having to weave through emergency cones and follow the waving flashlight of the patrol officer demanded that we travel at a crawl right past it.

I used to live in an apartment complex that is accessed from that cross street.

I never turned left out of it because I was aware of how dangerous it was.

It really needs a light.

It is situated on the sharp peak of a hill in a 50 MPH zone.

Making it difficult to see cross traffic in either direction and hazardous to get up to speed before being surprised by it.

From the various distortions to the three or four (unsure) pieces of wrecked metal that used to be SUVs, it looked to be likely that somebody had attempted a left turn (north) from that cross-street (west) and had (perhaps negligently) been surprised by a vehicle proceeding south traveling at least 50 or (probably) more, which caught them on the driverside, then they both ended up in the north lane where they were both hit by another vehicle traveling north coming up the peak, and then all of that was possibly hit by other cars traveling both north and south, meeting at the peak.

There were a lot of sheets over bodies in cars and a lot of emergency crews with body bags.

They weren't hustling, which meant that anybody that they could still help had already been carted off, all that was left was the investigation phase.

That intersection really, really, really needs a light.

So, eventually I got home, and got the girls out of the carseats.

The youngest will of course be clueless as she couldn't really see out, but all the carnage was on the eldest's side and she's front-facing now in her carseat.

She was uncharacteristically quiet the rest of the way home.  Though I've heard that we all forget just about everything sometime around when we're four or so.

I just can't believe that the longest part of the drive wasn't down and back on the freeways at rush hour.

Then the youngest started squalling for her dinner (hey, she's only 7 months) and you know what, tonight, it didn't seem all that bad, by comparison.

So, some recap of this week:

Tuesday afternoon the Grandparents-in-law from California arrived and I picked them up from the airport.

Just in time for rush-hour traffic on the way back home on the 94 and 75.

Wednesday morning, we drove down to the airport, through morning rush traffic on 75 and 94 to catch a flight to Nashville for a short layover and then on to L.A.

Where we arrived just in time for afternoon rush on 405 to 101.

That's a lot of rush hour for one 24 hour period, but hey, it's our first kid-free vacation since the youngest arrived six months ago.

But this vacation has a purpose, so it's not dirty.

This vacation is ostensibly for the wedding of a friend, who started out as the younger brother of a friend, but who grew into a full-fledged member of the crew as we all got older.

He even attended the same university as the wife and I, but didn't attend until after we'd graduated.

Even had the same major.

So, same dorms, same profs, same buildings, and same bars.

A bit weird that somebody you know ends up with so many of the same memories that you have, but acquired independently of yours.

So, we've been here a few days, and it seems like a week or more given the amount of activity and drinking that's been going on.  Fitting three or four days worth of living into each 24 hour period.

I'm beat, but there are a few more days left of the craziness, so I will soldier on through it, knowing that I have to savor this now,  because I have to be a responsible parent-type again by the middle of next week, for who knows how long at a stretch next time before we can cut loose again.

Yesterday, it was back down 101 to 405 to meet my wife's ex-boss at her new agency to catchup and nosh.

Though my wife's from North of L.A. she never spent much time in the actual city, so it was nice to have an excuse to actually get down there with a guide to navigate us around to a good place to eat and some suggestions for the rest of the afternoon.

After lunch, we waded through surf at Manhattan Beach and then took scenic PCH back up to Ventura County.

Then it was more drinking and eating, and being loud and obnoxious and scaring shit out of the bride and her family wondering what in good gravy they were getting married into.

I remember a key lime pie martini with graham cracker crumbs around the rim.

I remember an Italian restaurant that was way too nice for us and too us.

I think I peed there, cuz I remember there being really nice tile up along the walls.

Then walking, and a Thai restaurant that caught our eye and amazing Pad Prik King with green beans.

Then a hotel, more drinking, lots of suites, a nice barkeep that used her church-key to open a beer I'd bought at the store, but didn't have an opener for.

Raspberry vodka in a room with mango mixer.  Arrogant Bastard Ale that I can't find in the Midwest, but that I loved in college and that I always look for in Seattle or Cali.

A drive home, that was in all likelihood, irresponsible.

Waking up with a mean craving for IHOP.

Now it's off to the beach and the bottle.

And I'll write more, eventually, probably next week about what little I will remember of the rest of this week when the jet-lag and hangover subside.