05-24-2023, 04:24 PM
Let it begin.
May 1- Prologue and Departure.
Today is go day. In a little over three hours, The Queen and I will be getting in the car and driving to San Francisco to catch our flight to Dublin, via Heathrow on this leg. We did get upgraded to super deluxe premium. The only catch is we were no longer sitting together. We will have to do some wrangling with fellow passengers to see if they will switch with us.
Meanwhile there is Maeve. I admit to some guilt about leaving her. She is not in great shape. Her hearing is gone. She pants feverishly on the walks like there is something wrong with her lungs. Her interest in food is waning. This isn’t the best time to be leaving her because she could be leaving us. But we are going and we have a house sitter here to take care of Maeve.
The House sitter, the K-Man, arrived last night and his arrival was not greeted warmly by Maeve. This manifested itself last night by Maeve coming into our bedroom and barking first at me and then going to the other side of the bed and barking at the Queen. This used to be a nightly occurrence as Maeve would come in to discuss things with us as she came in to get water. But she has not done this in months. I blame the presence of a stranger in the house.
Another thing she hasn’t done in months, at least six, is try to get on the bed. Lately, she prefers to sleep in my office or in the mud room off the garage. Not last night. She laboriously propped her front feet on the bed and looked to the Queen to help her the rest of the way. On the one hand, it was great to have Maeve with us again. On the other hand, she leaks. For the last night, we could deal with the problem.
The problem never arose. Maeve, after a few minutes decided she wanted no part of being on the bed and started to leap off. Our bed is tall. Maeve’s joints can longer take the punishment of a leap down from that height. The Queen threw off her covers and moved quickly to help the baby. The Queen moved too quickly in the dark and smashed her knee into the bedpost, hard enough to fill the room with the noise of knee on wood. After helping Maeve, the Queen’s next stop was the kitchen for the icepack.
K-Man is settling in. We did the tour of the house and showed him the four pages of notes of his chores. He is taking it all in stride and the Queen and I can’t thank him enough for this duty. Hopefully, the Queen and he are still friends when we return. The worst note in the chores list is who to call if Maeve expires or has an emergency while we are gone.
The Queen and I spent most of yesterday packing. I know I have packed too much stuff, mostly camera gear. The Queen managed to get all of her belongings in one bag, one very heavy, heavy bag.
Wheels up at 7:50. We will be in Ireland at 6:15PM, Dublin time Tuesday.
The drive in to San Francisco went smoothly. My friend Google told us the quickest route was over the Pacheco Pass and then up the 101 all the way to SFO. The Queen got to hear my usual diatribe about the horrible 101 freeway. I come by my hate for the freeway naturally. Although, at 3pm on a Monday afternoon there was little to no traffic.
I did an internet search to find cheap parking near the airport. The cost to leave the car for our seventeen day trip at the airport would have been too expensive. When The Queen traveled all the time and used Park N Fly during her trips, we could get discounts at that facility. Sadly, those days have passed.
Searching the internet showed that Travelodge had a great deal on long term parking. Yes, that Travelodge. According to the Inter-webs it was cheap and had good reviews. My first misgiving came when I pulled into Travelodge just north of the airport and couldn’t find out where to check-in or where exactly to park. What exactly was the long term parking lot and what was the hotel parking. Signs kept directing me to drive forward. I did until I reached the end of the parking lot. Nothing was ever clearer. The Queen went to the front desk while I parked the car. As I dragged all the bags from the car to hotel reception over the rough tarmac, I at least spotted the airport shuttle driver. He told me to meet him here at the portico near reception to get driven to the airport. The word you are looking for is janky.
The Queen eventually made it through the crowd at reception, everyone in the world was checking in, and found out we were in the right place. She paid the money and I hiked back to the car to put the paid slip on the dashboard. Yes, I was worried this was the last time I would ever see my GMC Envoy.
After a long wait, the same driver appeared with the shuttle. My deduction was they had one van and one driver. We loaded up and headed to the airport. Since we were so early for our flight check-in, the trip through dropping off our bags and going through the TSA lines went very quickly. The airline also confirmed we had been upgraded to Premium Economy Plus, but we would not be sitting together on the plane. We would be flying on the Dreamliner 787 non-stop to Heathrow and then getting a connecting Aer Lingus flight to Dublin.
The Queen has been a United flyer for years. She’s been banking her miles in the hopes that she would get us first class tickets to Europe. According to the old rules, The Queen had met those qualifications handily. Naturally, the airline changed the rules. Now all her miles would get us was Economy Premium Plus. If we wanted to get into Polaris Business Class and those super cool pods, it would be thousands of dollars more.
They’ve done the same thing to their lounges. The Queen qualifies for the standard United Lounge which allows you to wait in semi-comfort next to a mini-buffet with USB charging ports at your comfy chairs. If the Queen spent more money, she could have gotten us into the super-special Polaris lounge. Nope. She had spent enough. I’m curious how the Polaris lounge compared to our lounge. Our lounge was pretty bleak, but still better than being out in general population.
Our seats on the plane were pretty nice compared to regular economy. And we did get someone to switch with us, so The Queen and I could sit together. On our seats when we arrived was a little goody bag filled with slippers, a toothbrush, eye-mask and earplugs. They also gave us over the ear head phones for entertainment usage. They served us dinner and it was bad but at least they gave us some food with our ticket.
The flight from SFO to Heathrow took about ten hours. I filled the time with watching The Fabelmans and Living. I also drifted off to sleep for a bit. All and all a pretty smooth journey to London.
May 1- Prologue and Departure.
Today is go day. In a little over three hours, The Queen and I will be getting in the car and driving to San Francisco to catch our flight to Dublin, via Heathrow on this leg. We did get upgraded to super deluxe premium. The only catch is we were no longer sitting together. We will have to do some wrangling with fellow passengers to see if they will switch with us.
Meanwhile there is Maeve. I admit to some guilt about leaving her. She is not in great shape. Her hearing is gone. She pants feverishly on the walks like there is something wrong with her lungs. Her interest in food is waning. This isn’t the best time to be leaving her because she could be leaving us. But we are going and we have a house sitter here to take care of Maeve.
The House sitter, the K-Man, arrived last night and his arrival was not greeted warmly by Maeve. This manifested itself last night by Maeve coming into our bedroom and barking first at me and then going to the other side of the bed and barking at the Queen. This used to be a nightly occurrence as Maeve would come in to discuss things with us as she came in to get water. But she has not done this in months. I blame the presence of a stranger in the house.
Another thing she hasn’t done in months, at least six, is try to get on the bed. Lately, she prefers to sleep in my office or in the mud room off the garage. Not last night. She laboriously propped her front feet on the bed and looked to the Queen to help her the rest of the way. On the one hand, it was great to have Maeve with us again. On the other hand, she leaks. For the last night, we could deal with the problem.
The problem never arose. Maeve, after a few minutes decided she wanted no part of being on the bed and started to leap off. Our bed is tall. Maeve’s joints can longer take the punishment of a leap down from that height. The Queen threw off her covers and moved quickly to help the baby. The Queen moved too quickly in the dark and smashed her knee into the bedpost, hard enough to fill the room with the noise of knee on wood. After helping Maeve, the Queen’s next stop was the kitchen for the icepack.
K-Man is settling in. We did the tour of the house and showed him the four pages of notes of his chores. He is taking it all in stride and the Queen and I can’t thank him enough for this duty. Hopefully, the Queen and he are still friends when we return. The worst note in the chores list is who to call if Maeve expires or has an emergency while we are gone.
The Queen and I spent most of yesterday packing. I know I have packed too much stuff, mostly camera gear. The Queen managed to get all of her belongings in one bag, one very heavy, heavy bag.
Wheels up at 7:50. We will be in Ireland at 6:15PM, Dublin time Tuesday.
The drive in to San Francisco went smoothly. My friend Google told us the quickest route was over the Pacheco Pass and then up the 101 all the way to SFO. The Queen got to hear my usual diatribe about the horrible 101 freeway. I come by my hate for the freeway naturally. Although, at 3pm on a Monday afternoon there was little to no traffic.
I did an internet search to find cheap parking near the airport. The cost to leave the car for our seventeen day trip at the airport would have been too expensive. When The Queen traveled all the time and used Park N Fly during her trips, we could get discounts at that facility. Sadly, those days have passed.
Searching the internet showed that Travelodge had a great deal on long term parking. Yes, that Travelodge. According to the Inter-webs it was cheap and had good reviews. My first misgiving came when I pulled into Travelodge just north of the airport and couldn’t find out where to check-in or where exactly to park. What exactly was the long term parking lot and what was the hotel parking. Signs kept directing me to drive forward. I did until I reached the end of the parking lot. Nothing was ever clearer. The Queen went to the front desk while I parked the car. As I dragged all the bags from the car to hotel reception over the rough tarmac, I at least spotted the airport shuttle driver. He told me to meet him here at the portico near reception to get driven to the airport. The word you are looking for is janky.
The Queen eventually made it through the crowd at reception, everyone in the world was checking in, and found out we were in the right place. She paid the money and I hiked back to the car to put the paid slip on the dashboard. Yes, I was worried this was the last time I would ever see my GMC Envoy.
After a long wait, the same driver appeared with the shuttle. My deduction was they had one van and one driver. We loaded up and headed to the airport. Since we were so early for our flight check-in, the trip through dropping off our bags and going through the TSA lines went very quickly. The airline also confirmed we had been upgraded to Premium Economy Plus, but we would not be sitting together on the plane. We would be flying on the Dreamliner 787 non-stop to Heathrow and then getting a connecting Aer Lingus flight to Dublin.
The Queen has been a United flyer for years. She’s been banking her miles in the hopes that she would get us first class tickets to Europe. According to the old rules, The Queen had met those qualifications handily. Naturally, the airline changed the rules. Now all her miles would get us was Economy Premium Plus. If we wanted to get into Polaris Business Class and those super cool pods, it would be thousands of dollars more.
They’ve done the same thing to their lounges. The Queen qualifies for the standard United Lounge which allows you to wait in semi-comfort next to a mini-buffet with USB charging ports at your comfy chairs. If the Queen spent more money, she could have gotten us into the super-special Polaris lounge. Nope. She had spent enough. I’m curious how the Polaris lounge compared to our lounge. Our lounge was pretty bleak, but still better than being out in general population.
Our seats on the plane were pretty nice compared to regular economy. And we did get someone to switch with us, so The Queen and I could sit together. On our seats when we arrived was a little goody bag filled with slippers, a toothbrush, eye-mask and earplugs. They also gave us over the ear head phones for entertainment usage. They served us dinner and it was bad but at least they gave us some food with our ticket.
The flight from SFO to Heathrow took about ten hours. I filled the time with watching The Fabelmans and Living. I also drifted off to sleep for a bit. All and all a pretty smooth journey to London.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm