I’ve come across to the Bay Area for three weeks with my family (which these days pretty much qualifies as a military exercise, believe me). For the first of these week’s I’ll be on vacation, catching up with friends in the area, as my wife and I lived here – back in the days before kids – for three years.
It wasn’t the smoothest start to a trip, I have to admit: early last week our eldest son came down with chickenpox. We were close to cancelling, but were given the advice to play it by ear: as it turns out he had it very mildly and was past the infectious stage by Sunday, when we were due to fly. So we headed to the airport, where I discovered that while we had the right number of seats reserved for us – four of the five of us travelling required seats – we were missing a ticket for our infant (the reservation was in their system, but had for some reason never been issued, a fact that had managed to slip the attention of yours truly). The problem took us much longer than expected to resolve, especially as it turns out the seats my wife and I had reserved for us – on a very full flight – were in an exit row. Apparently you’re not allowed a baby on your lap in an exit row (while I say “apparently”, I can certainly see the logic behind this, of course).
It all got resolved, but it was slow: they had to rush us through security at Geneva airport for us to catch the flight. We were starting to ask ourselves whether the universe was trying to tell us something (was this another Oceanic flight 815? ;-), but the flight to Dulles – and the subsequent transit on to SFO – went very smoothly. A pretty mammoth voyage for the kids, but they were little stars (on this trip, anyway).
I will be blogging during this stay, but do expect some disruption in service for this week of vacation, at least.