A Sobering Start

The day got off to a positive start; we cleared Anaheim on the 10:30 bus and got to LAX in plenty of time to get through Security and onto the 2:00 flight…unfortunately, I neglected that crucial step of checking online to make sure the flight was on-time. We got through to our gate and I was checking to make sure everything was on schedule - and it wasn’t L

Last Saturday’s Asiana Airlines 777 crash at SFO had set the flights upside-down, and even by our Monday’s flight, it wasn’t back to normal schedule around the airport. Our flight was 2 hrs late departing, and when we landed at San Francisco, it was pretty clear why. Debris from the crash was still strewn all over the runway beside ours, and the fuselage and wings were still lying there waiting for the NTSB to continue their investigation.

When we got on the shuttle bus to retrieve the car from the La Quinta, we could see the TV crews’ vans lined up outside the airport terminal like vultures waiting to catch the latest news tidbits that might drop from the SFO airport press officers’ news release. It was a sobering thought that we’d come so close to getting in the middle of the melee of the disaster. Seeing all that wreckage and wondering how all those people managed to walk away alive makes a person consider how fragile our grip on life really is sometimes.

We somehow navigated our way through the San Francisco rush hour without the help of our trusty Magellen OR the Smartphone GPS Human navigation - 1 TECHNOLOGY - 0!) and found ourselves at the Motel Capri in beautiful quirky Cow Hollow. It reminds me of how Vancouver’s Kitsilano would have been if it had kept its old buildings and interesting mix of shops. The Motel Capri is, well, let’s just say, kind of stuck in a time warp, but not without its charms. The boys are looking for a pool, but it’s hard to see how they’d get enough use of it with the unpredictable SF weather and our busy schedule. Secretly I’m glad to not have the smelly dripping bathing suits in the bathroom! What they are happy to see is a big beautiful HD screen in our room! This almost makes up for the tiny funky 60’s colours in the bathroom and the fact that we can just barely close the door to it.

We ventured just far enough for dinner to take in some Chinese food and retire to our new beds for the first night in the big town. One more big annoyance in our funky old hotel is a VERY unreliable internet connection. Despite the front desk assurance that we do have Wifi, none of us have ever been able to connect in our room, and all manner of Europeans we meet in the lobby every day keep asking us the same question in broken English. They seem genuinely puzzled at the hotel’s inability to grasp this essential piece of technology. See how dependent we’ve become?!

I'm already a day or two behind, but I'll continue to try and post from the hotel's lobby. It seems to be the most reliable, and that's not saying that much!