{"id":1870,"date":"2009-01-05T16:56:31","date_gmt":"2009-01-06T00:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=1870"},"modified":"2009-01-05T16:56:31","modified_gmt":"2009-01-06T00:56:31","slug":"todays-travelogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/todays-travelogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Today&#8217;s travelogue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>San Jose, CA<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m in San Jose this week to help host a Core team retreat for the folks planning and executing the 2009 Food and Society Gathering, which will be here in April. \u00a0 Here&#8217;s how I got here today.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Left BOwen Island last night on the 6pm ferry in the teeth of a southeasterly gale that drove sleet into the skin on my face. \u00a0 Rocky ride across the Queen Charlotte Channel, but uneventful otherwise.<\/li>\n<li>Grabbed a cab that arrived as I did and shared it part way with a lovely Finnish woman returning from a visit on Bowen. \u00a0 It was snowing so hard in Vancouver that cars and buses were stuck on all the hills so we drove around looking for clear and free aterial roads to try to get me to my mother in law&#8217;s place in South Dunbar. \u00a0 At one point it felt like we were just looking for the clean streets. \u00a0 I remarked to my Persian accomplice that we were driving rather like Nasruddin, who seaches for his lost key under the lamp, because it&#8217;s light there. \u00a0 The driver and I share a good laugh and some excellent conversation about Iran, Canada and Sufism. \u00a0 The ride is an enjoyable 1.5 hour crawl.<\/li>\n<li>Retire for the night but up at 4:45 to find a cab. \u00a0 Get to the airport and it&#8217;s a disaster. \u00a0 Lots of lines for all kinds of things, but mine are pretty manageable. \u00a0 Check in for 30 mins, US customs is 45 mins (with a secondary approval for my work visa) security is a mere 15 mins. \u00a0 IN Vancouver if you are an Air Canada elite member they give you a fast lane for security&#8230;looks like the regular lane was close to 45 mins long. \u00a0 Lots of folks rescheduled on flights that were cancelled last night. \u00a0 They were all tired and cranky, and it was kind of funny to see a planeload of sourpusses heading to Maui.<\/li>\n<li>Flight gets delayed an hour once I&#8217;m through, so it&#8217;s into the lounge, where Air Canada has replaced the formerly excellent espresso machines with slow inefficient machines with too many choices that appear to download your coffee. \u00a0 And then you get half a cup. \u00a0 Went to Starbucks and bought something close to real espresso.<\/li>\n<li> Boarded at 8:20, took off at 11. \u00a0 Combination of a flight attendant stuck in the snow, delays at the SFO end of things and other stuff which I missed because I fell asleep as soon as I hit my seat.<\/li>\n<li>Arrive in SFO at 1:00pm, figure I&#8217;ve burned enough carbon for one day so I opt for train to San Jose. \u00a0 Two minute Air Train ride. \u00a0 20 mins on the BART and an hour and 20 mins (including wait times) on the Caltrain. \u00a0 Arrive in San Jose at 3:39, walk the mile to the hotel, in my room at 4:20.  \u00a0 Cost me $7.50 cents not including the Subway sandwich I wolfed down for sustenance.<\/li>\n<li>So I&#8217;m here at the Fairmont, a luxery hotel in the middle of a strange city. \u00a0 My first time in Silicon Valley, so passing through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale and Mountainview was cool. \u00a0 Passing by Redwood City was cool too, as my dharma teachings come from there. \u00a0 One tip for the Fairmont&#8230;Internet access is $13.95 a day but if you sign up for their loyalty program when you check in, it&#8217;s free, and they give Aeroplan points and other useful perks.<\/li>\n<li>Waiting for mates to arrive, then I&#8217;ll see about dinner. \u00a0 Any recommendations, leave them in the comments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>San Jose, CA I&#8217;m in San Jose this week to help host a Core team retreat for the folks planning and executing the 2009 Food and Society Gathering, which will be here in April. \u00a0 Here&#8217;s how I got here today. Left BOwen Island last night on the 6pm ferry in the teeth of a southeasterly gale that drove sleet into the skin on my face. \u00a0 Rocky ride across the Queen Charlotte Channel, but uneventful otherwise. Grabbed a cab that arrived as I did and shared it part way with a lovely Finnish woman returning from a visit on &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-ua","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1871,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions\/1871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}