Traveling and Rental Cars and Tree, Oh My!

California/Oregon/Washington – Summer 2008

Thus begins the blog of our long-awaited vacation to the Pacific Northwest. Dear and #3 are adding 2 more states to their “been-there-done-that” list! That makes 31 for #3 and 38 for Dear. I already have all of the contiguous 48 on my BTDT list. Day 1 was Travel Day, but I do have some things to share about traveling and rental cars.

Our beloved home airport has recently installed those full body scanners in Terminal D – the newest of the buildings in DFWland. Luckily, our flight was scheduled to leave from Terminal A, so the dreaded scanners weren’t an issue for us. Until the day before we left. When I did our online check-in to print our boarding passes, I saw that our flight would be departing from Terminal D after all. Hmmm. That opened up a whole new spectrum of speculation for #3 and Dear. I could hardly wait to get to the airport for THIS adventure.

It was a bust. When we got to the security check-in lanes, I went left and the boys went right. Turns out that I made the better choice because I sailed through without a problem. The boys both got “puffed” as they walked through the scanner thing (not the full body, just the old-fashioned metal detector type). Evidently, the puffer is supposed to sense any kind of explosive materials that one may be harboring on their person. No alarms went off.

I think the boys were actually disappointed because the ensuing conversation was about wondering what would have happened if they’d um, you know, done the bodily emissions thing when they were walking through. Boys. Ya gotta love ‘em. At least to maintain some semblance of sanity.

The 3-hour flight was uneventful. No screaming children or obnoxious fellow travelers. There were also no complimentary snacks, but we had lunch before we got on the plane. American still graciously serves free sodas, water, juice or coffee. Everything else has a price tag.

Dear, in his never-ending quest to find good, challenging Christmas music for our beloved choir and orchestra, brought along one of the “top sellers” for this season for us to review. We got out the headphones and the music book and Dear fired up the iPod about 30 minutes into the plane ride. May I say to those of you who bemoan the fact that new music is scarce around COL, there is a reason for that. This musical was a JOKE! We rolled our eyes so much throughout the listening process that I’m surprised we can still focus on things in front of us.

OMG. I can’t even imagine any chuch anywhere – even First Church of the Beloved Hypocrites – presenting this music as a serious performance. From the opening number about “it’s that wonderful time of the year” to the last “yee-haw” rendition of Jingle Bells, it was … well, words just can’t describe the incredulity we both felt. I wouldn’t even consider it for a dinner theatre comedy show, much less a Christmas presentation! COL folks and all others out there with sensitive leaders (spiritually and musically), be thankful – be VERY thankful for what you have. There’s a LOT of crapola floating around the church music world. Okay, I’m through. On with the travels.

The rental car place at the airport in San Jose was ridiculously far from the terminal. We walked from the baggage claim area to the shuttle pick-up shelter, waited for the big blue shuttle and made the ride in about 30 minutes. I had made the rental car reservation on April 20 through expedia.com for a full-size sedan, 2-week rental with unlimited mileage, pick up at the San Jose airport and return it to the Oakland airport. Total cost was to be $226. Already budgeted and paid in advance. WRONG.

We were assigned to a red 2008 Nissan Altima. Nice. However…after Enterprise tacked on an extra fee for returning the car to a different airport, extra fee for driving to a state not bordering on CA, extra fee for driving more than 150 miles a day, etc., etc., etc., the blasted rental car cost more than the original allotted amount. A LOT MORE. If you’d care to contribute to the Rental Car Appropriations Fund, we’ll gladly accept your PayPal donations at senecajo@yahoo.com.

By the time we got finished wrangling with Gloria at Enterprise and got out of the rental car parking lot, it was smack dab the middle of rush hour in San Jose. Our exit route would take us north through either Oakland or San Francisco. At rush hour? Riiiiight. We drove (crept) for about 20 minutes and decided to find somewhere to kill some time (euphemism for restaurant). It was dinner time for us because we were still on TX time.

Maggie (our very own GPS gal) directed us to a little Italian place called O Sole Mio somewhere north of San Mateo. The name of the town escapes me now and I’m too lazy to get up and find that little menu I got so I’d remember the name of the town.

It was a small place, probably 12 tables at most, with a real old-fashioned juke box in the entrance foyer and individual juke box units at each table. #3 had never seen the individual ones before, so we used 3 quarters to hear some of our favorites from the list of available tunes. We each chose 3 songs. The choices ranged from Frank Sinatra to Dean Martin to Connie Francis. Are you detecting a pattern here?

The food was good – a little pricey – but we figured that would happen once we got to the west coast, so we budgeted accordingly. We sat and chatted with the waiter for a while and asked the best route north toward Oregon via the PCH. He said to go for the Golden Gate Bridge, so we paid the bill, said Ciao, and got back on the road.

Rush hour had nearly passed and traffic was moving along nicely. We drove north and headed for the Golden Gate Bridge. A first for all of us! I called my mom as we crossed the bridge just to share our adventure (however small) with someone back home. We’ll spend more time in the San Fran area at the end of our vacation, so I’ll write more about it then.

Our sleeping accommodations for the night were in Fortuna, CA – a 250-mile drive through the redwood forests of Northern California. Too bad it was pitch black for most of the drive and we couldn’t see a whole lot. There was also a lot of smoke in the air from the wildfires burning in NoCal. There were a few of the giant trees right at the side of the road that were very awesome – the part we could see anyway – but for the most part we were just intent on getting settled for the night.

Maggie kept telling us that we would reach our destination sometime after midnight, so I called ahead to confirm that we really were on our way and to please hold our room for late check-in. We made it by 12:10 a.m. (that’s 2:10 TX time) and pretty much fell into bed. After checking email, of course.

It was about 50 degrees when we got out of the car at Fortuna. Yeah. Brrr. Thank goodness and weather.com that we brought light jackets and one of those super-soft microfiber blankets (pink) ((mine)) with us. We even turned the heater on in the room for a few minutes just to take the chill off.

That was Day 1.

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