I had been told that the driver would pick me up at 6:00, plus/minus 15 minutes. It was minus (naturally); as a result, I didn’t manage to scramble together a dozen or so cassette tapes for the long drive through the Southeast as I had planned. (No big loss; there should be ample country stations out there.)
I also manged to not get quite everything packed: too few socks, meant to take a pair of sweatpants/shorts, and, more dramatically, I forgot the minutes from the last IAGLCWDC meeting. Or rather, I had the minutes on my laptop, but in the wrong format for the version of FrameMaker I had, so couldn’t read them. Sigh. (Thank you, Bo, for saving my butt!)
 |
The rest of the morning went without a hitch. I was the only shuttle pickup on that run, so we went right to the airport. Since I was flying First Class (on American Airlines), I got to board first, and there were only a handful of us in First Class. I even successfully completed one of the crossword puzzles, and slept for most of the trip. (By the way, I highly recommend First Class on cross-country flight, where you can really take advantage of it. Essentially, instead of a $400 trip for 25,000 flyer miles, I got a $2000 trip for $400 and 20,000 miles. [Actually, for less than that. By paying for the trip, I got the miles for it attached to my account, and even got bonus miles for flying First Class. So it was only 16,600 miles I was charged.] We got to choose our meal from a menu — I had the pumpkin pancakes — and the liquor was free. And there was the cutest set of mini salt and pepper shakers!) |  |
In Washington DC, at Dulles, I was supposed to pick up Jay’s friend Christopher’s ex-boyfriend Thom (don’t think about the chain too hard), arriving from Zurich. But his plane had been delayed somewhere, and he was being rerouted through either JFK or La Guardia, arriving at National (I will not call it Reagan until he’s really most sincerely dead!) four hours after the original schedule. So I picked up the rental car (a Ford Countour, from Budget) and went to Jay’s condo in Arlignton to wait. Eventually, Christopher’s other half, Michael (they live one floor up from Jay), picked me up and we went to meet Jay and Christopher at National for dinner, and Thom’s plane finaly arrived at 9:20 or so.