To the Airport & Back Home

Olympic Peninsula Travelog #21
Back Home - Mon, 6 Sep 2021. 10pm.

Whew. It's been another busy. Every day of this long weekend trip to Washington's Olympic Peninsula has been a long one, so why not the last, too? Here's a recap:

One More Hike

We squeezed in one more hike in the a.m. hours today, and it was a good one. See my previous blogs, Hiking to Sunrise Point and To Klahhane Ridge and Back.

An awesome thing about hiking today was that we finally had clear weather. Yes, after 3 days of gloom and occasional rain, the skies clear up just before we have to head home. Mother Nature's a basic bitch.

We finished up the hike earlier than I predicted. 1pm was the "gotta roll" deadline I planned for when we needed to start driving back toward the airport, but we were packed and ready to drive at 12:15. We figured that gave us time for a quick lunch stop along the way instead of eating protein bars in the car and waiting until near dinnertime at the airport. Except....

To Live or Let Dine

Trying to find a quick service restaurant to eat at became a chore. First we crossed off the list the places one of us disliked. Then we crossed off the list places that had savage reviews on Yelp. Then, when there were only a few left on the list, we found that they all had their dining rooms closed. "Due To County Vaccine Requirement", they posted. Huh?

There's no county vaccine requirement I had seen any evidence of elsewhere in the county. Nobody was checking for vaccination cards; that's not a thing there. And indeed most restaurants weren't even enforcing mask requirements— for customers or staff cooking & serving the food! These closures and signs struck me as political spite, local business owners so incensed that there are any Covid-19 safety measure in place that they'd rather cut off their own nose to spite the face by closing their dining rooms and turning business away.

Ultimately we wound up at a gas station convenience store with a deli. I got a fresh sandwich, Hawk got a microwave burrito, and we ate at a picnic table outside. Oh, and inside... the staff weren't all wearing masks and most of the customers weren't wearing masks either, despite prominent signs on the door stating "MASKS ARE REQUIRED".

Hurry Up and Wait

Having a few false starts at finding lunch didn't put us behind schedule. We ate quickly outside the convenience store and got back on the road. What did cost us were two traffic snarls. In one small-town area traffic moved at a crawl for miles. We lost at least 20 minutes. When we got through it there was no accident, no construction, no lane closure, etc.; just a bridge that apparently people were afraid to drive over without slowing down to a crawl. 🙄 Another section, in Tacoma, was a classic 7-lanes-merge-down-to-4 on a holiday weekend situation.

These delays didn't make us late.... I had planned the schedule to allow for small delays. That's part of my travel expertise— knowing that "unexpected" delays must be expected and thus included in time planning. Thus we weren't late as we rolled up to the airport, but we'd lost all buffer in the schedule for further delays.

Fortunately the only delay at that point was our flight itself. It was 10-15 minutes behind.

Et tu, Uber?

The flight from SEA back to SJC is about 2 hours. I slept for the second half of it. I half sleep-walked through the airport shuffle in SJC of exiting the aircraft, walking through the terminal, and waiting in baggage claim. By the time we had bags in hand it was 8:30pm and I was awake again. But then the next delay came: car services.

Hawk tried Lyft first. They wanted over $50 to take us home and said it'd be 30 minutes before a driver would even pick us up. $50 is about what it would cost to hire a traditional taxi, including a good tip for the driver. I flipped open my Uber app to see if their offer was any better. Their price came in a bit lower, about $42, and said a driver was 7-10 minutes away. We spent a few minutes comparing the apps, watching prices fluctuate over $50 and back down closer to $40. There was essentially some kind of surge going on... weird, because it wasn't even yet 9pm and there weren't that many people at the airport trying to hail rides.

After a few minutes of watching prices Hawk clicked through for a ride. The driver arrived about 8 minutes later, in a clean and well maintained car, and was very polite. That's why we prefer Lyft/Uber even when the prices are not significantly cheaper than traditional taxis— the driver have clean, new-ish cars, don't drive like they're trying to kill us, and are generally very polite. The driver even helped us with our luggage without being asked!

Back Home, and 7½ Days Later

We arrived home a bit after 9pm. It was 30 minutes later than we'd hoped but still early enough in the evening for us to unpack our bags, shower, and wind down before going to bed.

Edit: Well, we only unpacked some of our bags Monday night. The rest took until Tuesday or Wednesday to get to. And these blogs have taken now 7½ days to catch up on. But now the trip— and its story— are done.

The Sopranos

This week I started watching The Sopranos. I know, I know, it's like, "*ring* *ring* It's 1999 calling!" The show debuted a long time ago now— 1999! The pilot episode aired closer to the late 1970s than to today. 😧

I'm watching The Sopranos now because, well, better late than never. I considered subscribing to HBO for it back in the 00s but didn't want to pay the $12/month or whatever for a pay-TV channel. Plus, I don't think there was a way to get the old episodes back then until they came out on DVD— and then pay for the DVDs, too. Now, of course, there's a cost to stream HBO Max, but streaming is a better deal than traditional pay-TV because I can watch shows on my own schedule. And catch up on old episodes without buying them separately.

As an aside, there are other past series I'd like to catch up on, too. We're not paying for Netflix yet, so I can't catch up on Breaking Bad. With HBO Max I considered starting Game of Thrones now— while it's still fresh enough that people are barely still making memes about it. But I figured I should catch up on The Sopranos first before it gets as far out of date as The Wire.😅

I had a moment of second thoughts before plunging in to the pilot episode Monday night. The Sopranos is 86 episodes. If I watch one a day it'll take almost 3 months. That's a big commitment! Could I binge it faster? Sure, but I'd rather pace myself. I do have a full time job, plus I have leisure activities other than watching TV I'd like to keep up with. Even 7 hours of TV per week is a lot for me. UPDATE: It turns out I watched it even faster than that!

I also hesitated to dive into the show, worrying that it might not measure up to modern TV standards. What if the tropes are too hackneyed and dated in 2021? What if it were a cynical turd created by a showrunner whose idea was little more sophisticated than, "Hey, what if a mob boss had anxiety and needed to see a shrink?"

Well, even 15 minutes into the pilot episode that originally aired in 1999 I saw that the show is amazing. The writing is solid, the actors really portray their roles, and the sets, costuming, and cinematography show great production values. Even 22 years later The Sopranos rocks.