Getting there wasn't half the fun, but it did seem like it took half of my time
I didn't have access to the net for a lot of my vacation. Well, I did, really. I just didn't want to spend too much time glued to a chair in front of a monitor when I could have been visiting with friends and family. So, now I get to play catch up and hopefully my memory holds!
This little trip was kind of last moment and as I detailed before, I got the dates messed up. Since it was last minute, my wife couldn't rearrange her schedule to take me to the airport. So, on Tuesday, a buddy of mine told me he'd drop me off. The plan was that I'd bring my bag to work and he'd take me from the office after work on Wednesday and I'd just leave my car in the lot at work. It's on post and I figured it was better than paying to park at the airport.
I packed up Tuesday night. I planned to just take a carry on bag for the trip. Checking a big bag full of clothes I'd never wear seemed like too much so I travelled light. I got up Wednesday and went about my normal day. PT at 0530 and then to the office. The day passed sloooooowly. At 4 PM, my buddy took me to the airport and I started my long trip to Ohio. My plane left Monterey shortly before 6 PM and I flew down to LA for my first lay over. I spent close to four hours there. Then I flew to Cincinnati. That flight lasted longer than I really wanted it to. You'd think with my work history, flying at night wouldn't be a problem. Normally it isn't. I can sleep almost anywhere. But, I was sitting kind of funny to keep my lower back from hurting and this led to my upper back getting sore.
When I landed in Cincinnati, I called the unit and signed out on leave (yes, I started travel before I was officially on leave - bad me). I had enough time to get something to snack on before we started boarding for the flight to Cleveland. By this time, I was really tired (up for most of the last 24 hours). I slept through the short flight to Cleveland.
When I got to Cleveland, I quickly found the bus to the rental car center. The guy at the Enterprise counter was very cheesy. He tried to sell me on a bigger car for just 25$ more. His big features were power locks, power windows, and a CD player. The CD player almost made me take it. I made a new CD of some recent iTunes downloads and the thought of listening to that instead of channel surfing was appealing. But my Kia doesn't have any of those "cool" features, so I'm used to living without them. Funny thing was, the car I did get, a Chevy Cobalt, had a CD player. So, I was in luck!
I drove to my mom's place. No one was home, but I'd made arrangements to get the keys ahead of time. I visited with my sister's dog, Max. He used to be our dog. My wife and I got him in Korea shortly after we'd moved in together. He was a tiny puppy and got so sick we nearly lost him a week after bringing him home. He had to spend 3 days at the Osan vet before he was finally healthy enough to take back home. When we moved to Hawaii in '99, we tried to qualify him for the one month rabies quarantine (instead of the four month one), but the vet in Ohio dorked up something and Max failed to qualify. By the time we'd be able to bring him to Hawaii, he'd have already spent more than 6 months in Ohio without us. So, we decided to give him to my sister. She was really happy to be able to keep him. When she came out to visit last year, she brought him with her and it truly seemed like he remembered us. It was nice to see him again and have him immediately warm up to me when I walked into the place.
I napped for a few hours until my mom got home. We visited for a bit and then I got cleaned up and loaded back into the car. I'd decided to visit my dad the first night and it was going to take about four hours to drive down to his house.
This is turning out a lot longer than I thought, so I'll stop for now and post more later.
My Ecosystem Details