The airport hotel room was HOT last night, the air conditioner wasn't able to keep up with the heat in the valley....Sacramento reached 105 yesterday afternoon. Seems to be the case across the country. The good news for me was that I was flying back to Portland, with nice morning temperatures in the low 60's and a high of 82 projected for the day.
After packing up and eating from a poor selection of continental breakfast items and complaining in vain about the leaking toilet and hot room, I hiked across the terminal parking lot to find the terminal to check in for my flight.
Check in at the Southwest gate was uneventful except that I tried typing in the hotel confirmation number instead of the airline confirmation number and the self check-in kiosk made a funny noise that got the attention of the SW employees. For the first time I had no choice but to check the backpack without a protective cover of some sort like a duffel or laundry bag, so I worked hard to try and protect the contents including my hiking poles from being damaged in transit. I turned the pack over to TSA in hopes they wouldn't have to pull everything out to repack it because there was no way they were going to get it right on the repacking job.
I joined a mob at the gate. It was obvious this was going to be a full airplane for the return to Portland. With general seating on all Southwest flights, the A, B, and C line formed early so I stood in the B line for 45 minutes before the gate attendant announced that we were going to have a slight delay due to a problem with bent flashing on the main entrance/exit door. We finally began boarding and after watching all the A line go into the ramp walkway I wondered if the plane was going to be overbooked. I decided to go for the first available middle seat, and when I got into the plane there was one available on the fourth row from the front. Perfect! The flight was uneventful as well, but I got a chance to talk with the woman in the aisle seat from the Vancouver area who had hiked a lot of the PCT in Washington and Oregon. She said she could "feel my vibes" and knew that I would still hike all of the PCT this year...I was glad to get a free reading from my new psychic friend and the news sounds promising!
Eric awaited just outside the security zone. We retrieved my backpack which fared well on the direct flight and walked to the car where I left it in the trunk and Eric picked up his travel bags. We returned to the airport where we went to a sit down restaurant for lunch. It was actually reasonably priced and of good quality and I finally got my sushi fix for the first time since leaving Charlotte back in April! After a long lunch break we left and Eric headed to security to check in for his flight to Denver and I returned to the car to drive to Beaverton to return to the homestead.
I parked the car in the garage and opened the door, proclaiming to Ashley that her second husband was home! She laughed and the pooches recognized my voice and came running. Lucy and Maggie were very glad to see me, as they always are!
I spent the afternoon catching up on e-mail and the news and read the paper for a couple of hours. Ashley ran some errands while I unpacked and came back with the Sunday edition of the Oregonian newspaper which on the front page featured a lengthy story on the PCT. Seems a photographer and writer figured out a way to hike the entire Oregon section over the next few weeks and will be writing 3 stories a week about their experience on the PCT...and they are getting paid to hike! Smart guys and I need to figure out how to do that too!
We spent some time in the kitchen where Ashley put me to work helping to get dinner ready....a nice salad and some Tofu vegetable pancakes with a curry sauce that were really tasty! I followed up with a pile of ice cream since I lost 4 pounds in those few short days back on the trail.
We sat down in the den area with the lovable pooches to watch a few episodes of "Airline", a documentary filmed about the lives of the employees of Southwest airlines as they deal with the public's antics on a daily basis. It's a great series and confirms the craziness of the public trying to get what they want and being selfish when they don't. I was pretty tired from the last couple days of getting from point A to point B and we called it a night fairly early.
I'm glad to be back where the support team really takes care of me and hopefully the foot will respond quickly and will get completely healed.
