I am now in Eugene OR after a Friday that lasted way too long! Up at 0330 to drive to Boston for a flight leaving at 0645. The big advantage is that we avoided Boston traffic on the drive down. Of course, my dh had to drive back and go to work. The flight across country into SFO was not bad until we hit the Bay Area - it was raining buckets and the landing was a little rough, but tolerable. There were 3 hours between my arrival and my scheduled departure to PDX, and I asked about flying on the earlier flight but was told that I couldn't because I had checked luggage. So I decided to get lunch at a sit-down place - wandered over to the Crab Pot and was seated at a table that has sugar or salt stuck to it, was given a menu and ignored for 15 minutes while groups and men that came in after me were seated and served. So I walked out. I went to the sushi place in the Food Court and had some tolerable inari sushi - I later wished that I had tried the udon as it looked good. Oh well. Airport food being what it is..... The rain played havoc with flight scheduling. The flight into PDX left a few minutes late but not like the flight to Salt Lake City that was waiting to leave from the next gate over! The landing was one of the roughest I have experienced. We were over water, with the runway visible, and suddenly there was turbulence such that the pilot had to accelerate rather than decelerate, just to keep us from going into the drink. The touchdown was so hard that items in the galley broke loose from their anchors and went bouncing up the aisle. But we made it in safely, me praying furiously the whole time!
Portland OR has a Catholic FM station, KBVM, and I was able to listen to Patty Bonds being interviewed on the program Catholic Answers while I drove, which was wonderful. The signal faded about 1 hour's drive south of Portland. It was good to hear her speak.
Sat around with my son at his job for a couple of hours, then he took me to dinner at a good Mexican place where I had camarones and a marguerita (he was driving!) and to bed around midnight PDT (0300 EDT) for a day that lasted nearly 24 hours awake.
Today - Saturday Market, see my daughter, go to my friend's wedding, buy groceries that I can't find on the other coast.
