Day One in California

I realize that the picture above is not the best, but it's the best I can do with my iPhone.  This is the view from my hotel window here in Folsom.  My kids will be jealous (eat your hearts out Heckle and Jeckle). We are here.  It took a long while, there were some good points and some less good, but we are here.

The flight from TA to Frankfurt was full to exploding.  I was crammed in and cramped.  The guy in the seat next to me, walked on the plane and immediately dropped off into what I can only believe was a drugged sleep.  He then started to settle on my half of the arm rest.  I know it sounds petty but when you only have a few centimeters to move around in, an armrest is crucial.

We arrived in Frankfurt while the airport was still sleeping.  The business lounge luckily opens at 5:15am and we were their first customers. Very nice indeed (one good point).  There was food, free wifi, and a nice view of the runway and planes with the fog rolling in. The fog rolled off in time for an on-time departure (another good thing).  The plane was this enormous new Airbus A380 which looks like it really shouldn't fly (kind of like a whale or dolphin or aquatic creature of some kind). Well fly it did.  I scored the very best seat in economy (76K) which is an emergency exit row with no seat in front of my window seat. Score (the very best good thing). Everyone was so jealous that they struck up conversations with me just to find out how I magically got this seat (I just asked the ticketing agent in TA).

I did get cornered by this American woman who chatted me half to death while I was stretching my legs in the open space in front of my seat.  She really  talked up a storm.  So much so the German guy sitting next to me, saved me (with mention of food cart trapment, iff she did not go back to her seat). He looked at me and shook his head and said "Those Americans, they love to talk, I bet you know her whole history". It's true I know everything from the painful divorce through the child rearing, religion, terrorism, the roads, the Governor. And that was just in the first five minutes when she still thought I would give up my seat if she talked nicely to me.

We arrive in San Fran on time.  We motored up to Folsom, checked in and immediately went shopping. Yochai was the most decisive I have ever seen him, buying clothes for himslef and his family.  Dinner at Chipotles, now my head is swimming and it's only 8pm.  I'm going to crash. O.K. I have.