Home, Sweet Home... for 19 Hours

Phoenix late April travelog #8
Back home - Sunday, 30 Apr 2023, 9pm

This evening we got home from Phoenix, completing our 10 day trip to New Orleans, parts of Mississippi, and Phoenix. We walked through our own front door just before 8pm.

The trip home from Phoenix was mostly uneventful. "Mostly" because we did leave 20 minutes late. Good ol' Southwest Airlines!



Once we got home we hopped in our own car barely 10 minutes later to go out and get some dinner. We didn't feel like cooking, and I didn't feel like having another protein bar. I've been eating those bars for breakfast for pretty much a week and \a half now. First we tried our favorite pizza/sub shop. It was closed. Apparently they close on Sundays now. So we gave up and ate fast food instead.

Now we're in for the night. We've mostly unpacked our bags, and I've taken a shower. It feels good to be home.

We won't be here for long, though. Monday afternoon we're headed up to Seattle on a 24-hour bender. We'll be home for as little as 19 hours between these trips!

Busily Blogging in April, More to Come in May

April was a fairly busy month for blogging. I figured it was going to be. After a fairly busy month in March with 67 posts I knew that April had a chance of being even busier as I had two trips planned: a three day weekend at the start of the month and a 10-day trip at the end. I finished April with 68 posts for the month. That's slightly busier than March on a per-day basis, 2.27 vs. 2.16, as April has only 30 days to March's 31.

What's the outlook for May? Even busier... maybe. I have a whopping four trips planned already in May, with a fifth one being discussed. Not to mention a few blogs still backlogged from last week's trip. Travel is a big thing I write about in this blog, so more trips equals more things to blog about. But at the same time I emphasize maybe because more time spent traveling equals less time to write.

Update: I soft-pedaled predicting what May would be like. I set a new record in May with a whopping 84 posts!

Car Crash Finally Goes to Trial... 4.5 Years Later

On October 7, 2018, Hawk and I were involved in a car crash in Seattle. We were passengers in a car struck from behind in a multi-car collision. The police arrested the driver of another car for driving while impaired and reckless driving. Subsequently King County charged him with, I believe, Vehicular Assault, a felony[1].

Why am I writing again now about this unfortunate event from 4½ years ago? It's because now, 4½ years later, it has finally gone to trial.

Why has it taken so long? Oh, so many steps along the way:

• I think it took several months after the collision for the DA to file charges. I wasn't paying close attention to the process because, to me, the unfortunate event was a point in time. It was over. "The long arm of the law," though....


• The DA filed charges and then there were more delays. Defendants have a right to a speedy trial but usually waive it.


• Several months later Coronavirus became a global pandemic. The trial was delayed for over a year due to limits on hearing cases.


• My first notice of a trial date was June 2021. Then it was pushed to August, then September, then October.


• In September 2021 a defense lawyer interviewed me. That was almost 3 years after the day of the event in question.


• The defendant failed to appear for the court case in Oct '21. He skipped bail. It took months for police to arrest him again.


• In October 2022 I got notice of a new court date. The fugitive defendant had been found. But the date for the trial kept getting pushed every month until recently.


• Finally the case was assigned to a judge and scheduled on his docket to start in March 2023... though it was still delayed a week at a time a few times until the judge's other trials wrapped up.


• Finally the trial actually started a week or two ago. We're giving our witness testimony on Tuesday morning.

Four and a half years later! The wheels of justice sure do turn slowly.

_____
[1] In the State of Washington Vehicular Assault is a Class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000.00 fine.

19 Hours Later: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to Seattle

This afternoon it was Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to Seattle. We're in town to testify at a criminal trial tomorrow morning.

Today's journey started when we hopped in an Uber just 19 hours after arriving home last night. Repacking between trips wasn't hard. a) Very little is reused between the previous trip and this one. They're for different purposes and to very different climates. It was 103° and sunny in Phoenix yesterday. It's 55° and drizzling in Seattle. b) This trip is brief, just one night, so there wasn't much to pack. Oh, and c) experienced traveler. It's not my first less-than-24-hours-at-home rodeo.

Lines at SJC were surprisingly short when we arrived sometime around 3:30pm. That was surprising because it seems like nowadays everything is running at capacity in the airline business. Sure enough our flight was 100% full. I guess we simply beat the crowd to the security lines.

This trek had a slightly different experience than all the rest. We flew Alaska Airlines. I haven't flown Alaska other than once 10 years and several hundred thousand miles ago. More to the point, it's only the second or third time in that long I've flown in economy on any airline as a no-status passenger. What would it be like?

Flying Alaska was surprisingly better than flying no-status would've been on some other airlines. I had a good seat assigned... though that may have been a perk of the county's volume purchase relationship with the airline whose hub is in the county. Then I was able to select an exit row seat while checking in this morning. That, especially, was surprising. On airlines like United, exit rows are only offered to elites, and they're generally filled up days, even weeks, before departure. On the minus side, checking a bag would've cost me. Fortunately I don't do checked bags on short trips.

Also, the Alaska flight to Seattle left on time and arrived early. THAT is way different from flying Southwest! 🤣 To be fair to Southwest, though, their flight SJC-SEA this afternoon also left on time & arrived early. It figures the one time I don't fly them they manage to run on time.

Once on the ground at SEA we Ubered to our hotel downtown. I'm glad the county gave us an Uber voucher instead of asking us to take public transit. That means this chapter of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" doesn't actually include any trains, but it's worth it because the train from the airport to downtown is ridiculous slow. Like, seriously, if you value your time at effectively zero, go ahead and spend 90 minutes on a train with crazy people leering at you instead of 20 minutes in a private car.