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A day trip to California

I had a meeting in Sunnyvale today, south of San Francisco, so after waking at 7 to find the entire family in my bed, I showered quickly and ordered an Uber to the airport. My driver, a taciturn Russian speaker, almost pranged his car within a hundred yards of our apartment block, driving through a four way stop without pausing, as a huge green van bore down on us, its horn blaring.

To be fair, if we had been hit, I was on the left side of the car so might have avoided being hurt by the collision, and there would have been time to call another car, but in general I prefer to not start my day in an auto wreck.

TSA Pre Check is a wonderful thing, because nobody else at the airport has paid for it. I checked in to my flight as we drove to the airport. The line for security was five or six deep, snaking up and down the entire concourse, and I walked past every single one of them and got an expedited security check, not having to remove my computer from my bag or my watch, shoes, belt or jacket. It was Singaporean level efficiency, with the added perk that everyone else was having a miserable time while I breezed straight through.

I fell asleep on the plane (a good chance to catch up on sleep), woke, wrote an email, then disembarked at SJC and was at the office 20 minutes later, markedly more efficient than flying to SFO and battling the traffic. That made me complacent on the way home: I left with two hours before my departure, and then had a 45 minute drive to the airport, mostly stationary.

Oh, and my phone’s battery is down to almost zilch, because there are no functioning power outlets in the airport. But again, TSA Pre Check wafted me through security, past a mob of disgruntled types. How the other half live…

Then at the boarding gate, I got a surprise upgrade to a nicer seat. The only fly in the ointment was the man behind me, taking incessantly on his phone even as we taxied to the runway. Not sure if that’s worse than the clots bringing two wheeled bags on a flight. Home soon, before anyone even notices I was gone…

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