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For a trip involving no significant weather or airline foo ("significant") there was a full share of petty annoyances. The flight ended up being delayed out of Denver after all because the flight crew hadn't made it there yet. Where was the flight crew coming from? Detroit: the stopover point on cryptocosm's flight. Guess who else had minor (but annoying) delays due to lines at de-icing? In the end, the youngest brother and I got into Oakland an hour after scheduled (i.e., we were at baggage claim in Oakland right when cryptocosm was due to be arriving in SFO and expecting me to pick him up -- fortunately, he was delayed). The brothers each had one bag disappeared on them somewhere in transit. This, of course, meant that we had to wait until all the bags were out before filling out paperwork in Oakland, so our pickup circled the airport parking an uncounted number of times. Then there was the four-car pile up that screwed up traffic on the way back to my place. And, when cryptocosm finally got back to my place and loaded up the truck, it turned out he needed a jump to get it started. But they're all gone now. And it's only ... eeek! Must change the clock on the laptop back from Eastern Time. If I truly believed that it was 3:25 am, then I'd have to conclude that I've been semi-awake for 22 hours solid, and that would be very depressing. And so to bed.

Ok, a prop plane for the first leg, actually. The weather reports say no snow anywhere in my flight path. The airline web sites have no indication of delays or cancellations. I managed to repack such that I should still meet the luggage limits. (There's this problem of having come out with two suitcases and returning with two suitcases and a ski bag. Fortunately the smaller suitcase is technically small enough to be carry-on.) So with luck I should be sleeping in my own bed tonight. And then I get two more days of vacation before I have to go back to work. And then it's a three-day work week this week. Yay.

I was going to subtitle it "the air traffic controlers strike back" but that would put an unnecessarily negative spin on things. The flight to Boston ended up being delayed no more than 4 hours, putting me in my hotel bed finally at 3:30 am with an 8am wake-up call. (I suggested to the desk clerk that at the per-hour rate I was paying for the room, I thought it only fair that they throw in a cheap hooker. I think he was joking when he said he could probably arrange it.) The airport web site shows my flight to Augusta as "on time". It is, while not inconceivable, at least highly improbable that my luggage has not managed to keep up with me, given how much time I've spent between flights. (The luggage was checked through to Augusta, so I didn't have to bother with it last night.)

Made it successfully to Wash-Dulles. And the boards claim my flight to Boston is still going out tonight (albeit half an hour later than originally scheduled). That just gives me a little more time to linger over a sit-down dinner. (I'm blowing a couple weeks' worth of eat-out budget on this trip, but it makes me so much happier ... and I'm more likely to get something healthy.) Looking forward to bed tonight, though.

I was expecting to run into snow delays in Boston. I was quite prepared to find that my flight from LA to Boston had snow issues. But I hadn't quite expected my itinerarius interruptus to get only as far as the Oakland Airport Hilton. It seems the plane that was supposed to be the Oakland-to-LA leg had mechanical problems in LA and never left the ground to come up here. Given that I'm now leaving Oakland at 5-mumble in the morning, the free airport hotel room makes life a lot simpler than having to go home and back again.

Well, I have my suitcase all packed, the airport shuttle scheduled, and the cat arranged for. Of course, I don't leave until mumblety-thirty Wednesday morning, but tomorrow evening I'm off to see Beowulf with scotica and klwilliams. As usual, I keep running over the packing list in my head, trying to figure out if I've forgotten anything critical, but then, it's just a convention -- as long as I have clothes, money, and my computer, how important could anything else be? (Book with newly published story, check. Copy of Handel's Messiah, check.) Grph. Mumblety-fifteen, actually.

Dateline: Albion CA; Current odometer: ca. 200,982; Miles travelled today: 584; Current location of writing: back home again

This was the serious drive-time day. Also a serious scenery day. Trees, trees, and more trees. Have I mentioned that trees and mountains was the intended theme of this road trip? I left Portland at 8am and shared the road south with a significant number of rabid Ducks fans. You could tell this by the decorations on their cars. At Grant's Pass I headed for the coast, coming out at Crescent City. I took the opportunity to call ahead with an ETA and to return a missed call from scotica that had come while I was on a twisty bit of road, which turned out to be the news about maestrateresa. There can be a down side to being quite so continuously connected while on vacation.

On the road out, I'd gone "beyond the fields I know" north of Redding. Coming south, I hit familiar roads just south of Eureka, thanks to a long, if irregular, history of SCA events up that way. When I got to the Avenue of the Giants, I figured I was ahead of schedule enough to take the scenic parallel route for a bit.

I was wrong, mind you, about being ahead of schedule. When I cut over to the coast again at Leggett, I just barely finished all the windy mountainy bits before dark. Gorgeous road. Don't want to drive it in the dark. I'd told loupnoir and albionwood to expect me around 8pm and I was fairly close to that schedule except that I hadn't counted on the time spent second-guessing the back roads once I'd turned off of Hwy 1. All the maps I'd looked at seemed to think that you didn't go more than a couple of miles on Albion Ridge Road before you got to the turnoff for Middle Ridge Road, so when I'd gone about 4 miles -- on narrow winding country back-roads -- I figured that I must have missed the turnoff somewhere and started backtracking more slowly. Still no luck. Got nearly back out to the main highway and turned around for another pass at it. The theory that I was going to phone in for landing-approach instructions was eliminated by the complete lack of cell reception. It turned out that the first time I'd turned back only a couple hundred feet short of the well-marked turn. After that, the supplied instructions (which began "drive on Middle Ridge Road forever ...") worked like a charm.

Dateline: Seattle Washington; No miles counted (used Bill & Eden's car); Current location of writing: Bill & Eden's house

( Wherein I fulfill cultural and culinary goals. )

Dateline: Seattle Washington; No miles counted (used MK's car); Current location of writing: marykaykare's house

No pictures today, not for lack of scenery. After breakfast in a local cafe, marykaykare and I took off in her snazzy yellow convertible up to visit anghara in her woodland hideaway. Much chatting and schmoozing. Very enjoyable.

Dateline: Bend, Oregon; Current odometer: 199763; Miles travelled today: 155; Current location of writing: my motel be

( There are going to be pictures, so let's just put the whole thing behind a cut. )