On the Way to Indy

[Copied from my paper journal]

I don't write in a paper journal much anymore, with online access so ubiquitous, but I figured that I might want to write this week while at airports or while hiding away from my room, so one of my paper journals went into my carry-on bag for this trip to Indianapolis.

I'm apparently nothing if not consistent. My last entry here was written on 6/28/03 ... in the Indianapolis airport. It chronicled my final day exploration of Indy before I finally got stir crazy and headed to the Indy Airport a few hours early.

Today I'm at the San Francisco airport, en route to Atlanta, then Indianapolis. I'm here a couple of hours early because I was going a little stir crazy at home. Actually, I was feeling a little sick at home, but I knew it was mostly nerves, so I finally decided to head out. The advantage was that Kimberly walked with me to downtown before she headed back to the hospital for her own blood-letting experience.

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BART to SFO is so convenient. I was very happy when it finally started running a couple of years ago. The disadvantage is that most SF lines don't go all the way to SFO. Instead you have to transfer at Balboa Park, just short of Daly City. Balboa Park is an underground station that's inexplicably open air. Even at 11am, when I was there today, everything was still gold and foggy. I dressed lightly today, because I knew Indy would be warm, but I also expected to be cold at Balboa Park. I was.

Once you get to SFO, you hop on a people mover; there was all sorts of political posturing about whether BART could go to the airport or not, and the People Mover was the result. It's perfectly efficient, but humorous.

You get off of BART on the 4th floor, then take an escalator up to the 5th to hop on the People Mover. You ride it in a semi-circular route around the parking lot, then walk down some steps to an elevator that's always very crowded, then take that down to the 1st floor. You then cut back through the parking lot that you circled around and then take a sharp right, heading back toward the path of the people mover, cross a walking sidewalk, then go back up some escalators to the 2nd or 3rd floor, and into the terminal.

By which point you have pretty much no idea where you are.

About to board ...

Via Atlanta

[Copied from my paper journal. AGAIN.]

Well, I've been to Atlanta, Georgia now. It looked suspiciously like all the other airports that I've stopped at, but not left over the years.

We switched planes there. Afterward we sat for a good 30 or 40 minutes before being allowed the honor of leaving the South.

The flights have been uniquely comfortable, mainly because Chris, as ever, got us great seats. We took a wide-body from SFO to Atlanta, and had the space up against the middle bulkhead, which gave us plenty of legroom, but poor access to our carry-on luggage. A fair enough compromise. This time (on the Atlanta-Indy leg of our trip) we got an emergency exit row, and even more room than last time.

Theoretically we'll be getting in around 11pm (after setting the very confused clocks back an hour) and into the hotel sometime after midnight. That's 10pm Berkeley time, so not particularly late, except we have to be up at 7am Indy time to go get the booth setup and some comics circulated.

ugh.

And Arriving

In Indy now. The plane got in 30 minutes late because of that foolishness in Atlanta. It's now 1.30am, and I should be abed, but I'm not really tired. Momentarily I'll give it a shot, and then I'll get maybe 5 hours sleep.

The suite is really nice. I have my own roll-out bed in the main room and my own bathroom. Own room + own bathroom makes this all much more livable, even though they'll be lots of people around the suite most days.

Saw the Lovecraft comics for the first time, and I'm not entirely happy with the printing. A bit too light, and the paper's not what we hoped, but, ah well. It'll still be a great promotional tool, and most people won't be as critical as I.

Anyway, off to bed.

Good night, kimberly_a, I'll call you sometime tomorrow evening.