There was a blizzard in New Jersey? The California trip continues...

Since I was out in California around Valentine's Day.  The plan was to have my other half join me in San Francisco for an extended Valentine's Day weekend.  Apparently, Mother Nature was against this, and did all in her power to try and make this not happen.

So, while I was eating at Yamashiro, I got a text from my wife telling me that all flights out of Newark were canceled for Thursday, which was when she was to fly.  This led to a bunch of texts and calls back and forth while Plan B was created and enacted.  Plan B became her flying from Philadelphia to Houston to San Fran.  Which was finally resolved towards the end of dinner.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel where we continued our Plan B planning.

Wednesday

After teaching in a very unique spot in Downtown LA, literally in a type of basement in a room entitled "Emergency Training Room", my colleague and I hopped in the car and drove to LAX.  Amazingly, WE HIT NO TRAFFIC!

We get seats on a earlier flight, ensuring that we'll get in at 5PM to San Francisco instead of 9:30PM.  The flight is (oddly) empty and we have the center seat between us empty, enabling us to stretch out a bit on the United flight.  We also take off and land on time, another rarity.  We hop in a cab, head to the W Hotel and check in.

My colleague and I meet a few minutes later, and head out to dinner.  We wind up at Thirstybear (www.thirstybear.com) which is a brewery with Spanish cuisine.  I have a really good paella and their in-house Polar Bear beer.  After that, I head back to the room and while the W room is small, it does have a nifty place on the window where you can lay and watch the view.

It was nice to be back at the W Hotel (I had stayed there a decade ago, in fact it was on the night of the finale of the very first season of Survivor, as I remember watching it then).  I talked to the other half, who was still on for the trip to Philly, then Houston, then San Fran.  Later on, I check my home voicemail, and my cool neighbor, who works at Newark, leaves a message letting us know that all flights from Newark have been reopened on that Thursday.  As my wife went to stay at my parent's that day, I call her immediately there and let her know.

She lucks out and gets on a 4 PM flight directly from Newark to San Fran the next day, which will make things a lot easier (and it turns out, to be a good thing, as the flight from Philly to Houston actually turned out to arrive 2 hours late and she would have missed the Houston to San Fran connection).  I head to bed, feeling quite a bit better...