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Observations on the Way to Germany
Sep. 14th, 2023 11:48 pmI've been waking up at 8am the last few days, but today I set my alarm for 7am, to make sure I'd be ready to go to the airport without rushing. So, we hang out. I eat a piece of toast because my stomach is still unruly, as it has been through much of this trip (stress!). I gather up my stuff (hopefully all of my stuff), and we eventually head out around 10.30. It's just late enough to miss rush hour traffic in San Jose (we pulled the same trick in Kauai, but to avoid rush hour traffic there, we left at 8, just as it died down).
It's been a very nice trip other than occasional stress over what's going on with Lucy. I'm glad my mom asked me to extend my stay beyond a day. I'm really reluctant to be away from home as long as I will be, but 14 days and 13 days are pretty similar.
The United App helpfully tells me which door to stop at when we arrive at the airport: #12. So my mom loops around the international terminal and we count doors 1 to 4, and then I note that #5 says United. But there's a door #6 that I spot beyond, so I suggest we keep going, and then we're back in the open air away from the terminals. So we circle around, fortunately a short loop at SFO, and this time she drops me at door #5.
(Thanks app!)
The app is also continually telling me to go to the Baggage Shortcut as a benefit for my Business-class seat. But neither the descriptions or maps tell me where it is. Which isn't very helpful. (Thanks app!) After one or two confused minutes, I shrug my shoulders and just jump in the short Business-class line. I show the clerk my passport, hand over my baggage, and accept my boarding pass like I'm the most overprivileged a****** in the world. No lowly computer kiosks for me! (And now I don't have to depend on my phone for my boarding pass, which is acceptable, but always a bit of a pain.)
At the United Lounge, they check both my passport and my boarding pass, which is one more than the PreTSA line, where they just checked my passport. I guess we know who's the most concerned about keeping the riff-raff out.
The United Lounge is much as I remember it. I have an OK salad, which I might have defined as very good if not for the delicious salad that my mom fixed Tuesday night. And some shrimp and scallop over macaroni, which seems a little déclassé. I'm sure they should be using fancier pasts. I'm again shocked how crowded the lounge is. I mean there are teeming, entirely full gates downstairs, but there 100s of people secretly stowed up here too!
This year, my United app has been ticking down the minutes until boarding begins. (I would never allow it if not for the fact that I know I should have effectively unlimited power on the plane.) So I exit the Lounge about 10 minutes before boarding is supposed to begin, and arrive at the gate just in time to hear that they're boarding customers who need extra assistance.
Except the gate area is a WRECK. There are people standing as far as the eye can see, and it turns out to be because they've already laid out lines for both the zone 1 and zone 2 boarding. Except there's an elevator in the middle of the gate that blocks the whole front of the gate area, and everything else is jammed, so it's very hard to see where and what the lines are. I watch the people with disability and infants having to push through these lines for a while, and then when that settles down I realize the leftmost line is where I should be standing. But what a mess!
And then I'm on the plane and in my ridiculously luxurious cubicle of a seat. And as I planned, learning from last year's experiences, it's one of the cubicles set back from the aisle, since they're little triangles that have one on the window, one on the aisle, back and forth. Given that the whole intent is to avoid COVID, it was definitely the window that I wanted once I figured that out. (I always get windows now, since I read a study just before COVID that analyzed that you were much more likely to get sick on the aisle than the window.)
(The downside of getting the set-back cubicle is that I'm in the back half of business class, because that's the only place they were available, which means that everyone files past me. But I think it's probably a good tradeoff: people filing past three feet out at the start of the trip, when I'm fully masked, and not meandering by much nearer me when I'm eating.)
As usual I ignore the water or wine course before we take off. See above about people filing past my seat.
Next up is the hot towel course, which I always find bizarre. But sure, I'll clean my hands (and make sure I grab my backpack and hand sanitizer before the food begins).
The heated nuts course is next, and I'm surprised none of this has changed in the next year. I can *just* about eat nuts now without my teeth hurting.
The lights come down between 5pm and 6pm, which will be the middle of the night in Germany, and I can't believe how tired I am. (But I've been tired for days, and really for weeks and months.) No more than an hour or so napping on the trans-Atlantic flight is my rule, though, so I'm good and tired by the time I'm ready to align with CET, which is 9 hours off California and currently 12 hours off of Hawaii.
Around 6.30 I manage to doze off for about 5 minutes, and that's enough to rejuvenate me for a while after (the gummi worms probably help).
I'm hearing a few different sneezers in the Business section, which is unpleasant, but none are particularly close to me. Hopefully that's not COVID they're releasing into the recycled air systems. (Or any disease, really.)
I bought wifi for the trip, and it's atrocious. I take a look at the network, and it's literally dropping every other packet. The rest are getting round trip times of 600-700 ms. (But it's those dropped packets that are really killing connectivity.) Yikes. Probably won't bother with that on the way back even if Delta offers it, even though the dropped packets do clear up after a few hours.
(Too much time to think on the flight. I get depressed about Lucy, who, word is, really isn't eating back at home. Kimberly and I talked some during the flight, and it's been two days mostly without eating, maybe more, it seems. Lucy's got a vet appointment tomorrow [today?] where we'll hear what her weight is and what the vet thinks, and I definitely want to hear that before I try to sleep, but it's going to be like 8.30-9pm CET, and I'll also want to be crashing about then as I'll have been up for about 29 hours by that point, minus my 5 minutes thus far on the plane.)
The sneezing has now delightfully turned into snorting and snuffling.
As we passed through the night, the hungries settled in, so I wander up to the business-class snack bar, which is surprisingly spare, and secure a bag of salt and pepper kettle chips that sounds delicious. I then go back to my seat and spend at least 5 minutes trying to rip them open to absolutely no available. No precut slot to help out, not enough flap on the back to pop them open. I finally drop them into my backpack with some embarrassment, determined that I nonetheless WILL have those chips, just that they'd likely require a knife at my AirBnB.
A few times we've had enough turbulence for the fasten-seat-belts light to come on, and both times a flight attendant has come back saying sssssssseatbeltssssss, sssssssseatbeltssssss, sssssseatbeltsssss so soft and sibilantly that I didn't think it was even words the first time.
And we're now about an hour from landing, having been served breakfast at what my watch reads as 11.30pm but what is 8.30am down in Frankfurt. The cold fruits and hot eggs in the breakfast *do* hurt my teeth some. Could their sensitivity be increased by 10 hours at pressure? Hope that's it.
Time to post. It'll be a new day when we land. And tonight I'll try to connect with Kimberly about her vet visit, to give her every support I can for any decisions she has to make.
It's been a very nice trip other than occasional stress over what's going on with Lucy. I'm glad my mom asked me to extend my stay beyond a day. I'm really reluctant to be away from home as long as I will be, but 14 days and 13 days are pretty similar.
The United App helpfully tells me which door to stop at when we arrive at the airport: #12. So my mom loops around the international terminal and we count doors 1 to 4, and then I note that #5 says United. But there's a door #6 that I spot beyond, so I suggest we keep going, and then we're back in the open air away from the terminals. So we circle around, fortunately a short loop at SFO, and this time she drops me at door #5.
(Thanks app!)
The app is also continually telling me to go to the Baggage Shortcut as a benefit for my Business-class seat. But neither the descriptions or maps tell me where it is. Which isn't very helpful. (Thanks app!) After one or two confused minutes, I shrug my shoulders and just jump in the short Business-class line. I show the clerk my passport, hand over my baggage, and accept my boarding pass like I'm the most overprivileged a****** in the world. No lowly computer kiosks for me! (And now I don't have to depend on my phone for my boarding pass, which is acceptable, but always a bit of a pain.)
At the United Lounge, they check both my passport and my boarding pass, which is one more than the PreTSA line, where they just checked my passport. I guess we know who's the most concerned about keeping the riff-raff out.
The United Lounge is much as I remember it. I have an OK salad, which I might have defined as very good if not for the delicious salad that my mom fixed Tuesday night. And some shrimp and scallop over macaroni, which seems a little déclassé. I'm sure they should be using fancier pasts. I'm again shocked how crowded the lounge is. I mean there are teeming, entirely full gates downstairs, but there 100s of people secretly stowed up here too!
This year, my United app has been ticking down the minutes until boarding begins. (I would never allow it if not for the fact that I know I should have effectively unlimited power on the plane.) So I exit the Lounge about 10 minutes before boarding is supposed to begin, and arrive at the gate just in time to hear that they're boarding customers who need extra assistance.
Except the gate area is a WRECK. There are people standing as far as the eye can see, and it turns out to be because they've already laid out lines for both the zone 1 and zone 2 boarding. Except there's an elevator in the middle of the gate that blocks the whole front of the gate area, and everything else is jammed, so it's very hard to see where and what the lines are. I watch the people with disability and infants having to push through these lines for a while, and then when that settles down I realize the leftmost line is where I should be standing. But what a mess!
And then I'm on the plane and in my ridiculously luxurious cubicle of a seat. And as I planned, learning from last year's experiences, it's one of the cubicles set back from the aisle, since they're little triangles that have one on the window, one on the aisle, back and forth. Given that the whole intent is to avoid COVID, it was definitely the window that I wanted once I figured that out. (I always get windows now, since I read a study just before COVID that analyzed that you were much more likely to get sick on the aisle than the window.)
(The downside of getting the set-back cubicle is that I'm in the back half of business class, because that's the only place they were available, which means that everyone files past me. But I think it's probably a good tradeoff: people filing past three feet out at the start of the trip, when I'm fully masked, and not meandering by much nearer me when I'm eating.)
As usual I ignore the water or wine course before we take off. See above about people filing past my seat.
Next up is the hot towel course, which I always find bizarre. But sure, I'll clean my hands (and make sure I grab my backpack and hand sanitizer before the food begins).
The heated nuts course is next, and I'm surprised none of this has changed in the next year. I can *just* about eat nuts now without my teeth hurting.
The lights come down between 5pm and 6pm, which will be the middle of the night in Germany, and I can't believe how tired I am. (But I've been tired for days, and really for weeks and months.) No more than an hour or so napping on the trans-Atlantic flight is my rule, though, so I'm good and tired by the time I'm ready to align with CET, which is 9 hours off California and currently 12 hours off of Hawaii.
Around 6.30 I manage to doze off for about 5 minutes, and that's enough to rejuvenate me for a while after (the gummi worms probably help).
I'm hearing a few different sneezers in the Business section, which is unpleasant, but none are particularly close to me. Hopefully that's not COVID they're releasing into the recycled air systems. (Or any disease, really.)
I bought wifi for the trip, and it's atrocious. I take a look at the network, and it's literally dropping every other packet. The rest are getting round trip times of 600-700 ms. (But it's those dropped packets that are really killing connectivity.) Yikes. Probably won't bother with that on the way back even if Delta offers it, even though the dropped packets do clear up after a few hours.
(Too much time to think on the flight. I get depressed about Lucy, who, word is, really isn't eating back at home. Kimberly and I talked some during the flight, and it's been two days mostly without eating, maybe more, it seems. Lucy's got a vet appointment tomorrow [today?] where we'll hear what her weight is and what the vet thinks, and I definitely want to hear that before I try to sleep, but it's going to be like 8.30-9pm CET, and I'll also want to be crashing about then as I'll have been up for about 29 hours by that point, minus my 5 minutes thus far on the plane.)
The sneezing has now delightfully turned into snorting and snuffling.
As we passed through the night, the hungries settled in, so I wander up to the business-class snack bar, which is surprisingly spare, and secure a bag of salt and pepper kettle chips that sounds delicious. I then go back to my seat and spend at least 5 minutes trying to rip them open to absolutely no available. No precut slot to help out, not enough flap on the back to pop them open. I finally drop them into my backpack with some embarrassment, determined that I nonetheless WILL have those chips, just that they'd likely require a knife at my AirBnB.
A few times we've had enough turbulence for the fasten-seat-belts light to come on, and both times a flight attendant has come back saying sssssssseatbeltssssss, sssssssseatbeltssssss, sssssseatbeltsssss so soft and sibilantly that I didn't think it was even words the first time.
And we're now about an hour from landing, having been served breakfast at what my watch reads as 11.30pm but what is 8.30am down in Frankfurt. The cold fruits and hot eggs in the breakfast *do* hurt my teeth some. Could their sensitivity be increased by 10 hours at pressure? Hope that's it.
Time to post. It'll be a new day when we land. And tonight I'll try to connect with Kimberly about her vet visit, to give her every support I can for any decisions she has to make.