Travel Diary

With an early flight, it was another 6am wakeup. I had gotten a bit more sleep than usual, so while I was tired, it wasn’t overwhelming. It was a cold morning and I brought my jacket which was useful mainly getting to and from the Seattle airport, although this time of year, it might even come in handy in Florida.

Uber was $47. They were still doing their “discounts,” so it was hard to know if this would be ending soon. Lyft was still around $65 so Uber was the way to go. The light was dark, but the day was slowly starting to wake up as well.

At SeaTac, I did the SpotSaver once again. It does sort of save time—in that at least the initial line is much shorter (zero people in front of me this time), but since it’s mixed with non Pre-Check people, the belts move slower. Laptops also have to be removed. Since my iPad was covering my laptop, I had to wait for security to go over my bag situation and then send the laptop and iPad back a second time for another scan. This whole ordeal cost about 15 minutes.

But I did have plenty of time. Too much in fact. Boarding was supposed to start at 8:02am but nothing was happening then. I asked the gate agent and they could only say it should be starting soon. At the scheduled departure time of 8:40am, we had not even started boarding yet, so the flight was definitely delayed then. This was all fine. The issue is that they never seem to update passengers about these changes. The app and the gate displays just keep stating the incorrect times. Annoying, to say the least.

Finally, we started boarding. I didn’t need overhead space, so I waited until the very end and then got on board the plane. After take off, I purchased WIFI and then watched a few hours of football. That helped passed the time considerably. I was in Premium Economy so no meal for me, but I got a drink nevertheless, and I didn’t need the high-calorie food that day anyway. There would be plenty of that waiting in Florida.

After landing, my friend Serena picked me up and we headed to a fun bar near the docks. The place had the 49er game on which I wanted to avoid as it would be too stressful to watch it live, but I knew my team was winning, so I just needed them to remain in the lead and the game to end. There was only about six minutes left, but of course, in football time, that’s about 30 minutes.

The place was pretty nice. The only main problem was excessive volume for the music. It just made conversation that much more difficult. Not sure why bars need to do this, but not much could be done. Soon, the game did end and I was quite content with the final score.

Afterwards, we headed to pick up John, who would also be crashing for a few days. Then it was some TV entertainment to finish the evening.