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I've Got Something to Say
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Over the last several days, as I anticipated the first several days of the tour and working on journal entries, I started envisioning scenes from Star Trek and hearing the voice of the Captain (Kirk or Picard) making their log entries, "Stardate…"
The most event full aspect in flying from St Louis to San Diego was being told by the ticket agent at the airport in St Louis that my ‘oversized, overweight’ baggage charge (for my bike) would be $130 – not the $80 I anticipated based on the airlines web-site for checking a bike. He told me there was the $80 charge, plus a $50 overweight charge for being over 50 lbs (the bike case weighed 66 lbs). When I eluded to the fact the their web site said $80 for the bike and nothing about compounding charges, he explained to me that he didn’t work for the airlines and ‘this is what the computer is telling me." What else could I do? Ship it overnight (or maybe 2-day) via UPS? That would cost $200+, so the $130 is still a bargain. Then I gave him my Discover 2Go card (a mini card) and he said he needed a standard size card (old technology with the old carbon-copy type slips). So I asked Jacque for her card – she had left it in the truck. So I gave him my VISA/Debit card – not what I had planned. After all that I did send the airline an email about my dissatisfaction about paying what I had to pay.
On Thursday afternoon, I spent an hour or so taking my bike out of its travel case and assembling it. It was not as long and tedious as the 2+ hours it took to disassemble and pack it, along with a few other odds and ends like my helmet, shoes, water bottles, etc.
Later in the afternoon, my mom suggested that we drive up to Edwards Air Force Base (3-3.5 hours away) on Friday, and pay a visit to my brother, Chris, and his family. Since the time he heard about my trip out here, he had been planning to bring his family down for a visit while I was in San Diego, but due to a hernia operation on Wednesday, traveling was not an option for him. We left to go up there around Noon, sat a visited, while dinner was being prepared (by his wife, Janet, and her mother, Sandy). We then sat down around the dining room table and enjoyed a wonderful lasagna dinner, while we all visited some more. It was really an enjoyable visit. We had lots of laughs (some of them causing my brother to grimace and reach for the area of his incision) as we reminisced about our antics growing up.
Saturday – tour day 0 – didn’t go off quite as planned. I arrived to the motel a little after noon, John and Mom went a got some food for lunch while I went to the tour’s support vehicles and did some fine tuning & tightening to my bike. After they returned with the food, and we were enjoying our In-N-Out burgers, my roommate for the tour, Howard Sarasohn arrived. He headed on down (to the other end of the parking lot) to assemble his bike, and after saying my good byes to Mom & John I went down help him & mingle. (By the way, some of Howard’s family & friends are following us on this web-group, too). After Howard’s bike was assembled, we then went to task to put his bike case inside of mine – as we had previously agreed to – to ship them to our destination hotel in South Carolina. It took us a good half hour or so, having to remove the coaster wheels, the bike mount frame (which Howard then got someone else to agree to allow it to ride in their case to SC) and some scrunching and folding of his case to get it to fit in my case, and latch my case close. The case (cases) are waiting for UPS to pick them up from the hotel lobby (along with about a dozen or so others) on Monday morning.
It was then after 2:30 p.m. and we felt there was not time to ride our bikes to the beach and back (12 miles round-trip) before the 3:30 meeting. I am a little disappointed that didn’t take place – I have been itching to ride for the last two days – but there will be plenty of riding in the days ahead! The dinner that followed was great. Our choices from the buffet style dinner were chicken parmesan, veggie lasagna (I had two servings of this), spaghetti noodles & red sauce, mixed veggies, dinner roll, and tossed salad. There was also carrot cake for dessert – to many nuts & to few raisins for my taste, so I only had one serving.
Now its time to finish getting things ready for day one’s trek – it is only suppose to be up to 97 in El Centro tomorrow.
For those who have joined the group – there is a FAQ area in the database section (see the links along the top left hand corner of the group page). Email me if I need to elaborate on any of the topics listed so far or if there is other questions I could add to the list.
Until tomorrow!
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