Glad we took the red eye

Overall we had a very nice weekend getaway. We will never again travel on a major US Holiday using my travel benefits. If we have to travel we will be like *normal* people and buy *real* tickets.

The house we stayed at was amazing. Attention to detail and just "wowness" throughout.

[singlepic id=575 w=320 h=240 float=center]

[singlepic id=576 w=320 h=240 float=center]

[singlepic id=577 w=320 h=240 float=center]

Saturday morning we woke up around 7AM. We all vegged around until shortly before 10AM when we began our trek to San Francisco. In order to save money and time we decided to park at a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station and take the train to the city. The drive was a little more than an hour. During the trip Haley, my niece, took off her sandals. I never knew kids feet could smell so....powerfully. I was sitting next to Haley and spent a good 5 to 10 minutes watching her smell her feet and then asking Kelli and I to also smell her feet.

[singlepic id=579 w=320 h=240 float=center]

A few minutes away from the station, Jodi and Chelsea called letting us know they were close by. They were going to the game with us so we all met up at the same BART station.

BART is not as user friendly or as nice as the transit stations in Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. or New York. We managed to get tickets to the station we thought was REALLY close to the stadium. We arrived Embarcadero station and then had issues. We thought we could easily walk to AT&T park. Well it was 12 blocks away. After about 5 minutes of walking around with mass confusion, I bought tickets for all of us to ride the "Muni" from Embarcadero to AT&T park. Round Trip tickets were only $3.50 a piece. The "Muni" is another train system located in the same Embarcadero station, but it separate from BART. Yeah...we were confused.

We made it to the game at the bottom of the 1st inning. Our seats were up high, but we had a great view.

[singlepic id=582 w=320 h=240 float=center]

[singlepic id=584 w=320 h=240 float=center]

[singlepic id=587 w=320 h=240 float=center]

[singlepic id=588 w=320 h=240 float=center]

About two weeks ago I read that the only stadium food worth buying was the garlic fries at AT&T park. I bought a plate for each of us. They were quite good. The fries were crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and covered in garlic. Awesome.

[singlepic id=580 w=320 h=240 float=center]

The temp outside was not too hot. The breeze was nice. As far as the game, the Giants ruled. The game went by very quickly.

We all made our way to Fisherman's Wharf and ate dinner. I had more garlic fries.

[singlepic id=589 w=320 h=240 float=center]

While walking back I had one of those amazing thoughts that often run through my head. If someone told me 7 years ago that I would marry a democrat and then travel to San Francisco to attend a ball game and eat dinner with 2 lesbian couples.....I would have laughed them out of the room. But there I was....and I was okay with it. I will say having someone in the family who is gay has opened my eyes quite a bit. The stereotypical lesbian that was in my head is no where close to how most lesbians are. My sister in law and her girlfriend are just everyday women. Jodi and Chelsea are also normal everyday people. The fact that they are lesbians is so far back in my head that I forget....until I see them kiss or hold hands....then I'm like..."oh yeah....". My sister in law, Jami,  is doing an amazing job raising my niece Haley. I might be biased, but I think Haley is incredibly intelligent for being just 2 years old. Her vocabulary is way larger than other two year olds and her level of thought and reason is also advanced. Jami's current (and hopefully final) girlfriend Kelly is very nice and much more....hmmmm....grounded and "normal" than Jami's ex-wife. Kelli and I haven't had an odd or bad thing to say about Kelly yet....well beyond Kelly giving Jami her Iphone instead of giving it to me.

We started heading back around 6PM. On the way back to the car to get our stuff, Kelli and I discussed our options for getting home.

There was a red eye flight leaving at 12:20AM. The flight was booked pretty full with only 8 empty seats (all in First Class) while coach was overbooked by 5. There were a 6AM flight with 8 open seats and a 7AM flight with 12 open seats. We discussed simply going to a hotel and getting a morning flight. But why waste the money?

We decided to go for the red eye! The trip to the airport took an hour. We arrived at the gate and had 4 hours to waste. The gate area was very cold. Kelli was freezing. I had my nice warm Macbook Pro to keep me warm. Normally Kelli brings a jacket along.....not this trip. After an hour she broke down and bought a San Francisco sweatshirt.

I kept an eye on the load for the red eye. About an hour out First Class only had 4 empty seats (coach passengers were upgrading). Coach had over 20 empty seats. A lot of people were going to miss the flight.

Ten minutes to midnight we were sitting in First class aisle seats across from each other. Kelli was asleep as soon as the main cabin door closed and didn't wake up until we arrived in Dallas, 3 hours later. I was awake for most of the flight. I had a night cap and a cookie to put me to bed. I think I slept for an hour.

The flight crew had an interesting schedule. All they did was fly a 9:50PM flight out of DFW to San Francisco and then one flight back. That's it. They were all on the employee bus with us after the flight. This would be ideal if we had kids a kid. I could put the kid to bed, fly a trip and still be home when the kid woke up. Hmmmmm.

We landed at 5:20AM. By 5:45AM we were in my car driving home. We went to bed at 6:10AM and woke up around noon. I checked the morning San Francisco flights. The 6AM flight cancelled! No employee non-revs left on the first 3 flights and would likely not leave at all! Good thing we took the red eye. I left for work at 1:15PM. I am now sitting airport standby till 10PM.

The weekend was very nice.