How NOT to get to an Oz convention

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. I thought that I had everything all planned out, and would get to the Winkie Convention very easily. But it all turned into a comedy of errors, and now I'm just glad I'm here.

It all started off just fine with my flight from Seattle to San Jose. No troubles at all (once I got through security), and there were so few people on the flight that I basically had the whole back of the plane to myself. Once I got to San Jose, I knew I had to wait a while for my ride, as Karyl was coming in from a later flight from Portland. So I dutifully waited around for a few hours, read some more of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (in anticipation of the film this winter), watched some videos on my laptop, and had a little breakfast. Finally, Karyl's flight arrived, and I dutifully waited by the gate for her to emerge. Before long, everyone was off -- but no Karyl. Hmm... Not sure what else to do, I waited around a while in baggage claim, to see if she'd turn up there, but still nothing. Since I didn't want to miss the convention, I decided to make other arrangements to get to Monterey, and took the shuttle. That went smoothly, fortunately -- one even turned up early, and I was able to get going sooner than I'd expected. And lo and behold, there was the bus I needed to take to get to the convention right there at the transit center.

But guess what? I didn't have the right change on me. So I went across the street to a grocery store, bought a little light lunch, and sat down to wait. A bus came along with the right number before too long, and I climbed on. Now, having been to this convention over twenty times now, I've sort of gotten to know the area pretty well, and so after a while I realized I was nowhere near the conference center, and I realized that I was on the wrong bus! Yes, it was not going well. However, the bus driver told me how to get the right bus pretty easily, and also told me that it was the bus I would have had to catch if I had waited in Monterey, so no real harm was done, and I got to see a part of the area I hadn't seen before.

Finally, several hours later, but at least before the convention proper began, I arrived at the registration center. And lo and behold, who should be almost the first person I saw there but Karyl? Turns out that her airline had changed the gate of her arrival, but I never went back to double check. Not only that, it was in a completley different terminal than I was in, so I wouldn't have been able to meet her at the gate. So next time we decide to do this, we're just going to agree to meet in baggage claim, and make sure we have each other's numbers so we can call, since we both have cell phones now.

I really should have snagged that bargain flight all the way into Monterey when I saw it last winter...