Thursday August 31: Snohomish to Boston
Travel Day
We got up, had a quick breakfast, loaded up the car, and set out. It was nominally about rush hour, but we just took our time and didn’t stress out. John dropped us off, and then started fighting his way back through the Seattle traffic to get home.
We again took advantage of the TSA Pre program, but this time I drew the short straw instead of Amy. They just randomly swabbed my fingers to see if I had any sort of funny residue on them (explosives? drugs?) Then it got a bit more interesting. A guy looking at the X-ray machine said “OK. Who has the case full of fancy camera equipment?” That, of course, was mine.
He explained that the mount of the camera (which is sort of L-shaped) looked vaguely like the grip of a gun. So they opened it up (with me watching, opened up the big lens container, and verified that it was, in fact, just a lens. Not a big deal, but it made life a bit more interesting.
On the other side of security, Sam got some breakfast, while I just got some coffee.
On this leg, to keep the weight of the checked bags down, I put a bunch of the heavy things (e.g. books) into my day-pack and brought it with me as my “personal item” in addition to my carry-on bag (full of the fancy camera stuff). I also had my “in flight” stuff in the day pack, e.g. the noise-canceling headphones.
That ended up working very well. Not only did it free up some space/weight in the checked bags, but it was easier than trying hold a zip-lock bag of my in-flight stuff while trying to maneuver my carry-on suitcase. The day-pack didn’t take up too much room by my feet, so it was a clear win.
It was a full flight, and I was afraid of not finding overhead luggage space, so when the bins ahead of me started looking full, I put my carry-on case up in the bins, even though it was well forward of where we were sitting. It turns out that I was being overly paranoid. Down where we were sitting, there was plenty of overhead space left.
At the airport, I had bought a lightning to headphones adapter, so I used that to listen via the Bose headphones to the video playing on my phone. The only downside is that this meant that I couldn’t plug my phone into power to keep it charged. I think there are “three way” adapters that allow you plug one end into the phone, one end into your headphones, and the third into power, but I don’t have that kind. It ended up not being a problem, as I finished the flight with about 75% of my battery left.
After we picked up our bags, we went out to look for Knight’s Limo (the shared van service). We found the area, and then we saw that the van was sitting there, apparently waiting for us. We got on, and the van left. That was good timing from our point of view. In Westborough, we lost one passenger to another van. Then we (along with another passenger) went to our house and dropped us off.
It was getting late, and we had no real dinner food in the house. I wasn’t that hungry, but Amy and Sam were. We decided to get a pizza. The problem was that it was about 10:30 or so, and most of the pizza places were closed. Amy finally found a Dominos that was open until 11. Amy placed an order, and after a few minutes, I drove over to get it. When I got there, the guy said it would ready in about 6 minutes, but about 30 seconds after I sat down, he said it was ready.
I went home, we ate, and I hit the sack. So ended the trip.