Weekend overtime work--don't try this at home, boys and girls.
I was at my head office in Dallas all last week. On Saturday, I had planned to fly up to Washington, DC to see my my brother who still lives in the Langley area. I was going to stay until the next Saturday, when I fly home to Düsseldorf. OOPS, there's something that needed to be taken care of in the Bay Area on Saturday, and no one was free. Too short notice, blah blah. I said, sure, OK, I'll do it. So, I got up at 3 AM, got a car to take me to the DFW airport for a 6 AM flight to San Francisco. It left almost on time, and my luggage came out fairly quickly. I had to drag everything here and there at the SFO airport to the place where the ride share pickups were, but I managed. I booked a ride south (never been to Menlo Park before, but the driver found the address). Nice place. Beautiful vegetation, nice air, nice looking houses, both fancy and less fancy. Anyway, I met my appointment, worked intensely until 2 PM, and then he had to go. I called for a ride back to the SFO airport, got there around 3:15 PM.
Oh, we're so sorry, you can't check in for your flight for another two hours. So, no lounge, no restaurant, just a tiny snack bar with a few flimsy chairs. Fine, so I buy a sandwich and an "organic" apple juice that tasted like I should have had to produce an ID to legally be allowed to drink it. The expiration date was supposedly yesterday, but I suspect the year was last year, and the snack stand had altered it. So, I vegetated until I could check in, ditched my bags, and went through security. When I had arrived that morning, it was with United, which had a very pleasant terminal. I just presumed (STUPID!!) that the terminal I would depart from would be equally as pleasant. Nope. I was going on Alaska Airlines, which shares a terminal with American Airlines (whom I despise). It seemed like it had not been re-done in thirty years.
But--luckily, Alaska Airlines had a nice little lounge they let me use, and they had a buffet with Chicken Tikka Massala and some spicy Mexican black bean soup and Basmati rice. They also had a coffee bar with a German barista that was blown away by my accent-free German. If I HAD to spend another four hours in that terminal, it was as good a place as any. My flight to Washington DC wasn't until 9:15 PM, and I was REALLY starting to get tired. Finally at 8:30, I picked up my two pieces of hand luggage and trudged off to my gate, which was not nearby. The flight was delayed by half an hour, but I was not about to walk all the way back to the lounge, so I looked for a free seat. There weren't many, there being way more people insane enough to take a night flight from San Francisco to Washington, DC, than I had ever imagined. Finally the plane got there, the people on it got off, and it was re-boarded with the people in the waiting area. I put my computer bag up top and the lighter one under the seat in front of me, and noticed with some relief that the seat next to me was unoccupied. I wasn't overly hungry yet, after the decent food in the lounge, but figured I'd pick out the good parts of what they offered, have some water and leave the rest. I don't usually sleep well on planes anyway, but I was very tired by now. It would burn up some of the time. So, the plane started rolling away from the gate, and i closed my eyes briefly.
OK, maybe not so briefly. I opened my eyes, figuring the meal service would start sooner or later, but the announcement came that we were on final approach, and last trash would be picked up by the flight attendants. I asked one of them if there wasn't a meal being offered? They said I was out like a light, and had slept through the whole thing. There wasn't even time left for them to get me a cup of water. We landed, and I went to baggage claim. Of course, my suitcases were the last two off the plane, probably having been the first two on. So, I got an UBER car out to my brother's place, which is not too far from Dulles Airport, had some tea and orange juice, and promptly went to sleep for another four and a half hours.
Hint to all of us who are still working full time--if there is something like this that needs to be done, get someone else to do it. Dallas to DC via San Francisco in 24 hours. I'm getting too old for this kind of thing!
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I hope, sooner rather than later, that you'll have many hours of wonderful, deep sleep!
