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Published: November 26th 2015
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Thursday, November 19 So my mom and I took a trip out to San Francisco this weekend! I hadn’t been to California since my first-ever trip there in 2004. I had gone to L.A. with the honor society at my community college, and we stayed on the UCLA campus. That was shortly after I had jaw surgery, so I couldn’t even eat solid food while I was there! In fact, I had carefully packed a glass blender in my suitcase for the trip! Haha. But I enjoyed it a lot, and one of these days, I will just drive on over there again, since it’s only like 5 or 6 hours away from where we live now! Mom had never been to California before, believe it or not.
We had airline credit that we found out we needed to either use or lose by November, and I hated for that to happen. So I ended up finding really cheap round-trip flights to San Francisco and started researching things to do in the city. Started making a whole list of fun activities on my phone, started booking things online, etc. And believe me, there is plenty to see there!
Luckily I have Fridays off from school this quarter, which helped with the trip plans. I booked the flight for 6:10 pm on a Thursday evening even though I don’t get out of my Thursday clinic shift until 4:30. Crazy, I guess. The airport is about 12-15 minutes away WITHOUT traffic. Seeing as how this would be around rush hour, I didn’t know how much traffic we would run into. So I knew we would be cutting it pretty close! Mayyyybe too close. But that’s just how I roll. Well, that and there were no other flight options for Thursday evening.
I wasn’t sure what would be the best mode of transportation to the airport, especially since we were in a hurry. After much thought, I realized that there was just NO way we could drive our own car to the airport, figure out where to park, walk into the airport, and go through security all in enough time. Normally it seems that they want you to go through security by at least 45 minutes before the flight, so that was my goal. Wasn’t 100% sure we could accomplish it no matter HOW we ended up at the airport,
Our motel, the illustrious Travelodge
You can see that even some of the parking spaces at the motel required parallel parking! but I was hopeful. I decided we would take an Uber car.
8am Thursday morning came, and I went to my nutrition class. Still wasn’t done packing, though. My Thursdays are pretty full this quarter, with nutrition and homeopathy classes from 8-12:20, clinic shift from 12:30-4:30, and babysitting in Scottsdale from 5:30-9:15 or so (which I had canceled that week). Sooo the only feasible option was to skip the last half of nutrition and go back home to finish packing (2 minutes away). I left my phone in class so I could keep recording the lecture while I was gone. So I was there in spirit. Lol. Got home, downloaded the Uber app onto my mom’s phone and got that all set up (she’s not super technologically-inclined), finished packing my stuff into the suitcase, wrote a list of things to not forget, packed my lunch for school, etc. I knew that once I got home, we had to request the Uber driver, grab our stuff and go! Ended up getting out of my clinic shift about 20 minutes early and was VERY happy about that. Whew. Gave us a little more time.
Mom is not used to flying
post-9/11 (this was her 2
nd flight since 1995!), so as we went through security, I was trying to give her direction on what to do, how to place her belongings on the belt, etc. What completely slipped my mind is that we both had water inside of our tumblers. The security guy told us we had to go dump out the water or else just leave the tumblers there. So I left Mom at a chair with all of our stuff, and I took a walk with the security guy, who was carrying our 2 tumblers the whole way. Dumped out the water into a trash can, went through security again, and the man gave me a thumbs up sign, letting me know all was now well.
We had to ride a tram on over to the rental car pickup area. I had decided we better rent a car, partly because there is this “49-mile drive” in San Francisco that leads you to almost all the touristy spots you’d want to see while you’re there. Can’t very well do a 49-mile drive without a car, so I found a cheap one online from a rental car company I’d never heard of. No name brand car rental companies for me! Ha. Got up to the counter and found a notice that they had moved to a different floor. Went on over THERE, and waited in line to sign the paperwork. Didn’t occur to me that we’d then have to go to a separate area to actually pick up the car…aka the ground level garage. Duh. Waited there for about 20 minutes (they were cleaning the car, apparently), and then off we went! I was trying to find some restaurants nearby using the GPS on my phone (whose voice I affectionately refer to as “Jane," or not so affectionately depending on how good of directions she is giving me), but none of the very few options were gonna work.
SO, we headed north toward the city and I just took whatever exits I felt like at the time. Had no idea where I was going. It was dark, of course, and we were having problems locating places to eat. The businesses didn’t seem to have normal signs like you usually see….nothing that stood out. Wouldn’t surprise me if we drove past several restaurants and didn’t even realize it…they just were not very noticeable.
We see this couple walking down the street, and Mom goes, “Should I ask them if they know a good place to eat?” So we rolled down the window 1996-style (no power locks or windows), and wouldn’t you know it, they just got done eating at a pizza place that they said was really good and was just down the street—Long Bridge Pizza Co. Didn’t realize it was quite so close, so I passed it up the first time. Lucky for us, we found a parking space up close, but as we got to the door, what did I see but a “CLOSED” sign. The door was still unlocked, so we walked in and asked if they were indeed closed. The girl behind the counter looked back to the kitchen staff and asked them if they would make another pizza. The guy looked over at us, and fortunately he agreed to it. Maybe we looked like something the cat had drug in and he took pity on us. Haha. But thank goodness they were ok with it, because I don’t think either of us really wanted to drive around anymore to find a restaurant. The next potential customer who walked inside was turned away, so we got there just in time.
I was impressed with the pizza—it had a good flavor, and I almost wanted to go back again before we left town. AND the people who worked there were nice, too...we talked to the owner for a few minutes, and he was telling us about the area and how long the restaurant had been there (only a year and a half). Once the other tables started leaving, we decided we better get a box for the rest of our pizza and head on out, too…we didn’t want them to have to wait for us to leave. Their sign outside was actually kind of cool, too, because it looked like a wooden pizza pan.
After that we checked into our motel, and that was the end of night 1 in San Francisco!
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