Homecoming
It’s that time of the year again. At long last, another school year, and half of college, came to a close. Yesterday was a long day of cleaning out the room, and packing all my belongings into six boxes and three suitcases, and somewhere along during the craziness of packing, I had the wild idea of relating the process of packing our stuff to prophase chromosome condensation (I took cell biology this semester).
I decided not to sleep because my flight is scheduled to leave New Haven at 7:40 in the morning, which meant I would have to leave campus at around 5:30.
Around 4:30, I got hungry and went I went to A-One first, but found that it was closed. Instead, I got a Reuben sandwich from Gourmet Heaven, the grocery store across the street, and resumed my House catch-up while I ate. As promised, I will start on Glee once I finish House, which I will do the next few weeks.
I called Metro Taxi, booked a ride for 5:30, and got to Tweed Airport before the security checkpoint opened. I ran into a slight snag during check-in when I found that my suitcase weighed over 58 pounds. I ended up taking out my bloated folder that I keep various paperwork and my chemistry textbook, which cut the weight to just at 49.5 pounds. My backpack was already stuffed, so I carried the chem book and the folder (which I guess summed to 8 pounds) with my free hand while my other hand carried the guitar until I get my suitcase back in San Francisco.
It was raining when we started boarding. Tweed was a small airport, and we were boarding a small Dash-8 turboprop plane, so there’s no jetway to the plane. They provided us with umbrellas as we walked to board the plane.
Either the flight was surprisingly pretty smooth, or I was really tired. Taking off in rainy weather wasn’t too bad, not at all compared to taking off in a snowstorm a year ago, which was so turbulent that even the flight attendant got scared speechless for a second. I slept for most of the 1 hour flight and woke up to the jolt of the plane touching down in Philadelphia.
We pulled into the F terminal in Philly, which apparently is exclusively for the little prop planes and was separate from the other terminals, so we had to take a bus over. After finding my gate, I found that the flight boarded later than I thought. I went and got some pizza from Sbarro. I was thinking about starting on knocking out the first chapter of Organic Chemistry for Free when they made the announcement that we were starting to board.
The rest of the trip was also pretty smooth. It was raining again when we took off from Philly, but once we were above the layer of cloud, it was all sun. The second flight was about 6 hours long. Once again, I was sleeping for most of the flight, since I hadn't slept at all the previous night. At one point, I plugged in my headphones after listening to a crying baby for about fifteen minutes and somehow ended up falling asleep with Halo by Beyonce playing on repeat. That was when things got interesting because the audio started becoming part of the dream.
I woke up when the pilot announced the final descent into San Francisco. The approach into SFO is always something. We basically fly in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, over the San Mateo Bridge, and then start coming down closer and closer to the water. It almost feels as if we would be landing in the bay until suddenly solid land and the runway appears below.
We arrived an hour later than scheduled, since we took off about an hour late. In any case, it was good to be back on the West Coast.
At the baggage claim, when I opened my suitcase to put the folder and the textbook back inside, I was greeted by a TSA Notice of Baggage Inspection. Apparently, the TSA went through my stuff, but it was understandable because I had to stuff a laptop in there.
I decided not to sleep because my flight is scheduled to leave New Haven at 7:40 in the morning, which meant I would have to leave campus at around 5:30.
Around 4:30, I got hungry and went I went to A-One first, but found that it was closed. Instead, I got a Reuben sandwich from Gourmet Heaven, the grocery store across the street, and resumed my House catch-up while I ate. As promised, I will start on Glee once I finish House, which I will do the next few weeks.
I called Metro Taxi, booked a ride for 5:30, and got to Tweed Airport before the security checkpoint opened. I ran into a slight snag during check-in when I found that my suitcase weighed over 58 pounds. I ended up taking out my bloated folder that I keep various paperwork and my chemistry textbook, which cut the weight to just at 49.5 pounds. My backpack was already stuffed, so I carried the chem book and the folder (which I guess summed to 8 pounds) with my free hand while my other hand carried the guitar until I get my suitcase back in San Francisco.
It was raining when we started boarding. Tweed was a small airport, and we were boarding a small Dash-8 turboprop plane, so there’s no jetway to the plane. They provided us with umbrellas as we walked to board the plane.
Either the flight was surprisingly pretty smooth, or I was really tired. Taking off in rainy weather wasn’t too bad, not at all compared to taking off in a snowstorm a year ago, which was so turbulent that even the flight attendant got scared speechless for a second. I slept for most of the 1 hour flight and woke up to the jolt of the plane touching down in Philadelphia.
We pulled into the F terminal in Philly, which apparently is exclusively for the little prop planes and was separate from the other terminals, so we had to take a bus over. After finding my gate, I found that the flight boarded later than I thought. I went and got some pizza from Sbarro. I was thinking about starting on knocking out the first chapter of Organic Chemistry for Free when they made the announcement that we were starting to board.
The rest of the trip was also pretty smooth. It was raining again when we took off from Philly, but once we were above the layer of cloud, it was all sun. The second flight was about 6 hours long. Once again, I was sleeping for most of the flight, since I hadn't slept at all the previous night. At one point, I plugged in my headphones after listening to a crying baby for about fifteen minutes and somehow ended up falling asleep with Halo by Beyonce playing on repeat. That was when things got interesting because the audio started becoming part of the dream.
I woke up when the pilot announced the final descent into San Francisco. The approach into SFO is always something. We basically fly in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, over the San Mateo Bridge, and then start coming down closer and closer to the water. It almost feels as if we would be landing in the bay until suddenly solid land and the runway appears below.
We arrived an hour later than scheduled, since we took off about an hour late. In any case, it was good to be back on the West Coast.
At the baggage claim, when I opened my suitcase to put the folder and the textbook back inside, I was greeted by a TSA Notice of Baggage Inspection. Apparently, the TSA went through my stuff, but it was understandable because I had to stuff a laptop in there.
Finally, I headed up to the AirTrain and made my way to the so familiar BART station. After stopping at Balboa Park to transfer, I got on the Dublin/Pleasanton train and rode it the rest of the way.
The return trip always feels both nostalgic and accomplished in it's own way, like a capstone on the school year. It was also nice going from the rain to sunny California just as summer is starting. It's good to finally be back.
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