Well, although likely everyone is expecting to just
hear about the meet, I'm going to tell a bit more.
After all, my part of the meet was the
longest - not only was I there all of Saturday and
Sunday, but I participated in a micro meet on Friday
and another on Monday¹! I may even include some of
Thursday... Yes, I think I will...

I had a few errands to run before I left, and since
Tom was still out of town², I
had to take the bus all over³, so it's a good thing I've got a
monthly pass!

What else did I need to do? I needed to pay rent,
and call the phone company to ask why the phone hadn't
been hooked up on Tuesday like it was supposed to
be⁴. That trip didn't
take very long - and the nearest pay phone is only
about four blocks away. However, I had said many times
that I was going to bring garlic pistachios to
Sunday's picnic, and I hadn't gotten any yet, so...
There's one store that I know carries them.
Unfortunately, I can't get there from home without
doing a few transfers... Those pistachios took me four
hours!

After running my errands, I had some other things
to do, like finish packing for my trip, and make the
tape I'd promised Theory⁵, and try to unpack a
few more of the boxes from the previous weekend's
move. After I did most of that, I was fixing
something to eat, and the doorbell rang⁷. It was
Tom's sister, with a message from Tom to call him at
the hospital, because he wasn't able to get ahold of
me. (No working phone yet, although the person calling
couldn't tell that - it would appear to be ringing...)
So I turned the oven off and went to where the
payphone is. Now, every time I use my phone card from
a payphone, nine minutes get taken off
automatically⁸. Tom wasn't there... The nurse
told me he'd just left with his mom, and that they
should be back after seven. OK, fine... I went back
home, finished dinner, ate, and showered. By the time
I was done, it was about 7.30, so I figured that
surely Tom would be back... I figured wrong. I left a
message that I'd call when I checked into my room the
following night.

Of course, since Tom was an eight hour drive away,
he couldn't take me to the airport like we had
originally planned. And his sister had been driving me
all around earlier that week, so I didn't want to
impose on her anymore, especially since my flight was
due to leave about 11.30 pm or so, and she has to get
up for work⁹. So what to do?
Well, luckily, I'd thought of that while I was at work
Wednesday, so I did some research, and found that
thereis a bus that goes out to the airport.
Since I only had planned on taking one suitcase and my
purse¹⁰, that was just about perfect. What
made it even better, though, was the route number
of the airport bus. Take a wild guess what it
was...

Go on, guess...

42¹¹!

So, I left to catch the bus that would take me to
where I could catch bus 42. When I got to the airport,
I was very early, because of how the bus schedule was,
but that was fine. There were two people behind the
ticket counter¹²
and I was the only customer around, so picking up my
ticket took all of two seconds. (OK, maybe a few more,
but not very darn much!) Going through security was no
problem, as I'd asked some people that I knew had
flown before for advice (and some of the stuff I was
told I already knew). I was even the person that got
randomly pulled aside to have the wand-thingy waved
around me, and I didn't beep at all¹³. In fact, the security lady ran the
wand over herself once or twice, just to be sure it
was working! (It was.)

Well, I'm finally at the airport and have made it
through security, and had a couple hours until my
flight. The flight time had been changed from 11.30 to
midnight, so the flight itself was on...

This was the first time I'd ever flown, and since
I'm not overly fond of heights, I had no idea how I
would handle flying¹⁴. Turns out that I enjoy it...
Evidently, there's no direct flights from Sacramento
to New York, or from New York to Sacramento. At least
no bargain ones... So my first ever flight was from
Sacramento to St Louis. I slept for two hours of that
flight, and that was the longest stretch of sleep I
had that night¹⁵. I was awake for the landing,
though, and my first landing was the smoothest - if it
weren't for the fact that I was watching out the
window, and the sound changed, I would never have
realized we'd landed until the announcement was
made.

After a two hour layover, during which I didn't get
to meet broe because she had to work, I got on my next
flight. I managed to sleep an entire hour on that
one So, as I kept saying all
weekend, I got three hours of sleep, not all in a
row...

This has gotten pretty long, and I haven't even met
anyone yet! To be continued next week... And next
week's will have the photo album linked, as I haven't
gotten all 63 scanned in yet...

Amy Pawloski

15.08.02 Front Page

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