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Kelowna, Day One: The Retreat
Sep. 11th, 2016 09:02 pmThe journey to Kelowna for the Blockstream retreat begins at 5.00am this morning, as my iPad wakes me up, after I slept through turning off my Fitbit alarm.
I've never ridden Uber before, and I was a little nervous having my first ride be at 5.30am in the morning on a Sunday. But BART, our pathetic second-world public transit system, doesn't get going until 8am on Sundays. (Lazy!)
Because why would anyone want to get to the Bay Area's airports before 8am on a Sunday?
Anywho, I put in a request to Uber at about 5.20 and after an interminable few minutes waiting for someone to pick up the request, I finally heard that a driver was 10 minutes away. He was at the house by about 5.35.
I was pretty surprised the app never buzzed me to go outside, which would just seem polite. But I was watching the little car on the little map and stepped outside just in time.
I felt bad for the driver. He says that he drives seven days a week. He doesn't even have time to go to church with his kids, because he's always driving (though he has brunch with them afterward). It reminds me of the cab driver in the 7 Up series.
I'm also somewhat unsurprised by the indentured servitude of an Uber driver, especially an Uber driver in San Francisco. But he also says he's been in the country for 12 years, and so I have to presume that he was doing something that didn't work out as well beforehand.
He wants to go back to the Philippines though, and is just waiting for his kids to get into college. (Not that he has any savings for that, he tells me, and I say that I don't understand why college isn't free in this country, like in the civilized world.)
At SFO's airport security, I "opt out" of their radiation machine. It's mostly not the fear of health effects. Though we don't know a damned thing about it, and I think we're going to end up with clusters of TSA cancer 20 years down the road. It's the security theatre of it. I'm vastly offended by costly security measures that exist only to give a false sense of security (and in the case of the scanning machines to give a lucrative government contract to Dick Cheney's friends).
So, I opt out.
If everyone opted out, the requirement for these unnecessary scans would totally fall apart, but most people are sadly willing to do exactly what they're told.
Anywho, something new today. After the patdown, they test the gloves for explosive residue, and this time the test comes up positive.
I'm totally non-plussed. I have plenty of time and I know that these tests are entirely susceptible to false positives. Then the explosive-detector goes off again for someone else as the TSA agent gathers my stuff, then again for yet another person before I'm done.
I guess you can feel safe about their sensitivity. Or if you prefer, it's security theatrer.
So the TSA agent goes through my backpack, running an explosive detecting strip against all the compartments, and picking out the electronics to look at. Later when I pull my wallet and keys back out of the easy-access wallets-and-keys pouch, I realize he hasn't looked there at all.
(Security Theater.)
Afterward I get taken off for a private screening, the most notable element of which is a second TSA agent, who is clearly ready to leap upon me if I should do anything untoward.
This time the agent uses a different machine to test his gloves and they unsurprisingly come back clean in what I assume must be a machine with a lower sensitivity.
There are no bagels in the whole international gate area at SFO, just sweet pastries, hot bacon and egg sandwiches, and refrigerated sandwiches that were probably prepared in Boise.
I decide the refrigerated sandwich is least likely to upset my digestion during the flight, though it was more food than I wanted at what's now 6.30.
I take it to the gate and sit down.
It's entirely mediocre. It mostly tastes of cold.
They keep calling "Dylan Thomas" as I sit at the gate, telling him to report to the security checkpoint.
And I keep thinking, "Dylan Thomas, whoever he is."
Seattle is the next stop on the airline gauntlet. I've been here before, in 2003, but I don't remember the airport being so crazy. Part of the problem is that there are just too many people, even compared to the decent sized airports that I'm familiar with like San Francisco, Oakland, and Honolulu. But they've also totally screwed up their seating.
They have a large holding area associated with every six gates or so, and then teeny little holding areas by each gate. The theory must be that planes won't be leaving at the same time, but it's horribly misguided. The teeny holding areas are jammed hours before the flights, not helped by the fact that about 20% of the seats are unused handicap seats. Then the big holding areas are filling up too.
I take a walk up and down a couple of the wings of the airport and it's clear that this is a general problem. The holding areas are all jammed and people are spilling out into the walkways, intermingling with the gross numbers of walkers already jamming the airport.
Go, Sea-Tac.
I had a number of stressors lined up for the day, starting out with getting to the airport without the benefit of BART and/or using Uber for the first time.
My next stressor is figuring out where to get my suitcase and getting it through customs at the Kelowna airport.
(Yeah, it's been a while since I've been out of the country — not since our honeymoon, in 2000.)
And this turns out to be such a non-issue that it's ridiculous. Because I cleverly changed my seat to get to the front of the plane, I'm practically the first in line at the customs desk.
I hand her my declaration form and my passport, she says, "You have food to declare?", I say, "Trail mix", and she marks it all with a green highlighter and I'm outta there.
Three minutes tops.
They don't even wait for us to pick up our luggage first.
Hotel Zed is our housing for the week, and it looks a little more like a motel than I expected, but the rooms are large, attractive, and well-maintained, and they have both a ping pong lounge and a mini-disco. The hotel, not the rooms, though that'd be really cool. (The actual company retreat occurs in rooms at the more upscale hotel next door.)
About six of us with Blockstream check in at the same time, so that's stress-free as well. I'm thrilled to discover that I have a quiet room to myself, and that it's directly adjoining to Chris' if we want to talk.
I'm deciding what to do with my evening, and one of the folks I know at Blockstream says he's planning a walk, and I jump right on that. About a dozen of us head out, but people start fading away as we continue on.
We finally get into Knox Mountain Park and there's just three of us left.
This was one of the places I'd identified as a possible nice walk, but it turns out to be about two miles away, which means that today was probably the only time to rationally go see that. So, yay that we did.
Two of us made it to the top (and me just barely), which was about 90 flights of stair up, and from there we got some beautiful views of Kelowna and Okanagah Lake. Which turns out to be huge.
We hike back afterward and get some very tasty dinner at the adjoining hotel.
And it turns out that our schedule for mornings is extremely reasonable. A 9.30 start every day will probably let me get some quiet solitary hiking in the morning.
So, stressors mostly gone, and now there's just an interesting week ahead.
I've never ridden Uber before, and I was a little nervous having my first ride be at 5.30am in the morning on a Sunday. But BART, our pathetic second-world public transit system, doesn't get going until 8am on Sundays. (Lazy!)
Because why would anyone want to get to the Bay Area's airports before 8am on a Sunday?
Anywho, I put in a request to Uber at about 5.20 and after an interminable few minutes waiting for someone to pick up the request, I finally heard that a driver was 10 minutes away. He was at the house by about 5.35.
I was pretty surprised the app never buzzed me to go outside, which would just seem polite. But I was watching the little car on the little map and stepped outside just in time.
I felt bad for the driver. He says that he drives seven days a week. He doesn't even have time to go to church with his kids, because he's always driving (though he has brunch with them afterward). It reminds me of the cab driver in the 7 Up series.
I'm also somewhat unsurprised by the indentured servitude of an Uber driver, especially an Uber driver in San Francisco. But he also says he's been in the country for 12 years, and so I have to presume that he was doing something that didn't work out as well beforehand.
He wants to go back to the Philippines though, and is just waiting for his kids to get into college. (Not that he has any savings for that, he tells me, and I say that I don't understand why college isn't free in this country, like in the civilized world.)
At SFO's airport security, I "opt out" of their radiation machine. It's mostly not the fear of health effects. Though we don't know a damned thing about it, and I think we're going to end up with clusters of TSA cancer 20 years down the road. It's the security theatre of it. I'm vastly offended by costly security measures that exist only to give a false sense of security (and in the case of the scanning machines to give a lucrative government contract to Dick Cheney's friends).
So, I opt out.
If everyone opted out, the requirement for these unnecessary scans would totally fall apart, but most people are sadly willing to do exactly what they're told.
Anywho, something new today. After the patdown, they test the gloves for explosive residue, and this time the test comes up positive.
I'm totally non-plussed. I have plenty of time and I know that these tests are entirely susceptible to false positives. Then the explosive-detector goes off again for someone else as the TSA agent gathers my stuff, then again for yet another person before I'm done.
I guess you can feel safe about their sensitivity. Or if you prefer, it's security theatrer.
So the TSA agent goes through my backpack, running an explosive detecting strip against all the compartments, and picking out the electronics to look at. Later when I pull my wallet and keys back out of the easy-access wallets-and-keys pouch, I realize he hasn't looked there at all.
(Security Theater.)
Afterward I get taken off for a private screening, the most notable element of which is a second TSA agent, who is clearly ready to leap upon me if I should do anything untoward.
This time the agent uses a different machine to test his gloves and they unsurprisingly come back clean in what I assume must be a machine with a lower sensitivity.
There are no bagels in the whole international gate area at SFO, just sweet pastries, hot bacon and egg sandwiches, and refrigerated sandwiches that were probably prepared in Boise.
I decide the refrigerated sandwich is least likely to upset my digestion during the flight, though it was more food than I wanted at what's now 6.30.
I take it to the gate and sit down.
It's entirely mediocre. It mostly tastes of cold.
They keep calling "Dylan Thomas" as I sit at the gate, telling him to report to the security checkpoint.
And I keep thinking, "Dylan Thomas, whoever he is."
Seattle is the next stop on the airline gauntlet. I've been here before, in 2003, but I don't remember the airport being so crazy. Part of the problem is that there are just too many people, even compared to the decent sized airports that I'm familiar with like San Francisco, Oakland, and Honolulu. But they've also totally screwed up their seating.
They have a large holding area associated with every six gates or so, and then teeny little holding areas by each gate. The theory must be that planes won't be leaving at the same time, but it's horribly misguided. The teeny holding areas are jammed hours before the flights, not helped by the fact that about 20% of the seats are unused handicap seats. Then the big holding areas are filling up too.
I take a walk up and down a couple of the wings of the airport and it's clear that this is a general problem. The holding areas are all jammed and people are spilling out into the walkways, intermingling with the gross numbers of walkers already jamming the airport.
Go, Sea-Tac.
I had a number of stressors lined up for the day, starting out with getting to the airport without the benefit of BART and/or using Uber for the first time.
My next stressor is figuring out where to get my suitcase and getting it through customs at the Kelowna airport.
(Yeah, it's been a while since I've been out of the country — not since our honeymoon, in 2000.)
And this turns out to be such a non-issue that it's ridiculous. Because I cleverly changed my seat to get to the front of the plane, I'm practically the first in line at the customs desk.
I hand her my declaration form and my passport, she says, "You have food to declare?", I say, "Trail mix", and she marks it all with a green highlighter and I'm outta there.
Three minutes tops.
They don't even wait for us to pick up our luggage first.
Hotel Zed is our housing for the week, and it looks a little more like a motel than I expected, but the rooms are large, attractive, and well-maintained, and they have both a ping pong lounge and a mini-disco. The hotel, not the rooms, though that'd be really cool. (The actual company retreat occurs in rooms at the more upscale hotel next door.)
About six of us with Blockstream check in at the same time, so that's stress-free as well. I'm thrilled to discover that I have a quiet room to myself, and that it's directly adjoining to Chris' if we want to talk.
I'm deciding what to do with my evening, and one of the folks I know at Blockstream says he's planning a walk, and I jump right on that. About a dozen of us head out, but people start fading away as we continue on.
We finally get into Knox Mountain Park and there's just three of us left.
This was one of the places I'd identified as a possible nice walk, but it turns out to be about two miles away, which means that today was probably the only time to rationally go see that. So, yay that we did.
Two of us made it to the top (and me just barely), which was about 90 flights of stair up, and from there we got some beautiful views of Kelowna and Okanagah Lake. Which turns out to be huge.
We hike back afterward and get some very tasty dinner at the adjoining hotel.
And it turns out that our schedule for mornings is extremely reasonable. A 9.30 start every day will probably let me get some quiet solitary hiking in the morning.
So, stressors mostly gone, and now there's just an interesting week ahead.