It turns out that flying early on September 11th is pretty good for avoiding lots of people at the airport. I suspect this is due to people being irrational, and being afraid of things that happened fifteen years ago. I would suggest that today was one of the safest days to fly, as only horribly stupid terrorists would do a second attack on the same date. Doing so would only dilute the impact of the first attack, and would cause increased security in the future. Plus, it's predictable, which is kind of something to avoid.
Then again, even the first attack wasn't really an existential threat, and is more akin of a criminal event that didn't really deserve the large military response used.
Today also had the difficulty that BART doesn't run until 8am on Sundays, so I needed to get a ride to the airport instead of just to West Oakland. This was further complicated by Colby feeling sick due to a medical issue, and Julie not feeling comfortable driving on the freeway after nearly two years of not doing so. This led to the final decision that the only way to sort this out with the minimal amount of hassle was to call Uber.
Uber is identical to pretty much all taxi services I've used in the past forever, with the additions of a tracking function in the app and a disregard for basic employee protections. I was led to believe that it provided better customer service. The fact that I know my driver was named David, moved here from Italy, and was starting in San Francisco after working in Sacramento indicates that that's not true, as I don't really want to talk to my drivers. Given the expense load placed on drivers (admittedly a two year old article, but I can't imagine things have improved, especially given the cut in fares), and the fact that even with these subsidies from their employees, the company isn't profitable (given that excluding taxes and interest is just a way of pretending those aren't real expenses), I don't see how this is sustainable.
Is it useful when a bunch of things go wrong making it otherwise difficult to get to the airport? Yes. Is it something I would ever want to use on a regular basis? No.
In any case, I made it to the airport, and was able to go through the metal detector scan instead of the useless back scatter machines, allowing me to skip through with minimal hassle. Because I plan out lots of pre-flight airport time, even the complication in getting there didn't have much impact.
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| I got a pastrami sandwich while waiting for my flight. I put sad stickers because it's always unpleasant to leave after vacation. |
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| And I had a reasonable seat on the plane. Because of the low number of passengers, I was able to have an empty seat next to me. |
I did sleep a bit on the flight, but I'm still tired. The other odd thing was that when I got to the taxi line to get a ride home, I watched as a limo pulled up to the curb. This makes it the third time I've gotten a ride home in a limo in the past year.
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| I didn't know which stickers to use for a limo, so I went with "generic party" and "what someone dealing with that generic party would look like." |
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| I kind of felt like pizza, and this is something I could have leftovers to bring back for dinner. I almost drove out to Koko Marina to see Kubo, but I didn't think I was up to watching a movie after being on a plane for so long. |
- Pokemon.
- I'm tempted to get one of these now. I saw that there were some complaints, but simply being able to do simple actions without needing to get my phone out would be useful.
- A disguise.
- Krabby.
- Poke-food.
- Superheroines.
- Other stuff.
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