Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Daylight saving switchover meant the alarm went off at 6:00 am (5:00 am in real time; 3:00 am in Seattle time!). It was pitch black outside when I loaded up the car. I had breakfast downstairs (it’s provided free at Hampton Inns, as is the WiFi, and a dreamily comfortable bed!!!) and was on the road south (I-35E) by 7:45. I had to be in New Braunfels by 11:30 to meet a friend from San Antonio for lunch.

Three observations from the drive: oh how I’ve missed the smell of dead skunk in the morning! (NOT…); there is road construction going on for miles and miles between Dallas and Austin; there’s nothing quite like pumping up Bon Scott (AC/DC) on ‘Highway to hell’ and singing along while passing numerous churches 😉

I ended up running a tad early, so I stopped in at the HUGE outlet mall in San Marcos to pick up some stuff on my list. After getting a bit lost, I eventually found the Huisache Grill in New Braunfels (it’s hidden behind other shops/buildings) and I found my friend. We both had the grilled blackened catfish, which included the sides PLUS a cup of chicken tortilla soup and a hot sourdough dinner roll, all for $13.95! Compared to Australian prices, that was an absolute bargain. It was really delicious too.

After we said our goodbyes, I went on to the resort where the quilting retreat is being held all this week. My room was ready, and it is a much bigger and nicer than the room I had last year. The room air conditioner is much quieter than last year’s too, so I shouldn’t need to wear my ear plugs 😉

I caught up with Kim (the organiser) and another lady (Cherrie) I sat next to last year — we’re going to sit next to each other again this year too. She’s here with her husband and 86-year-old father — they will be exploring this area while Cherrie is quilting. Another person I met at drinks was Rayna Gillman, one of tutors (the other tutors this week are Robbi Joy Eklow and Velda Newman.

After drinks and dinner, we had a general info session with Kim, then all went to our respective classrooms with our tutors. I’m in Velda’s class, and she got us to sit close to her and we introduced ourselves one by one, which was good — we didn’t do that last year. There are a few people I remember from last year, and they all remembered me (being the only Australian, and all 😉 ) It looks like a good group, with a real mix of talents and interests and backgrounds. Most are from Texas, with one from Oklahoma and one from Georgia. Another lady I met at drinks is from Colorado.

This year I’m going to try to take photos of all the processes and techniques we learn/try out — last year, I didn’t start to take photos until close to the end so hope to redeem myself this year.

Last night, some of us stragglers from the conference took a cab to Blue Moon Burgers in Capitol Hill, Seattle.

We’d been told that they had awesome burgers — including a burger with peanut butter!!! Yes, you heard that right… a burger with peanut butter. Amber and I both had the El Diablo Azul burger — a burger with jalapeno and other chili things on a ciabatta bread roll — and shared a side of chili cheese fries. Let’s just say that Australians have NO IDEA how to make chili! (as in chili con carne). The burgers were great, but very filling.

El Diablo Azul burger

Chuck and Dave both had the Code Blue burger — two huge burger patties, with slabs of thick crispy bacon, cheese, and peanut butter smeared over the bread roll. No, I didn’t taste that heart-attack-waiting-to-happen (maybe that’s also why they called it ‘Code Blue’), but Dave said it was delicious.

Code Blue burger

Needless to say, we were all STUFFED after our burgers, so we walked back to the hotel (a good mile, but all downhill, and much easier to do with a chatty group of friends). Oh, and I stupidly also had a malt thickshake (mint flavour) with my meal. ‘Stupidly’ because that thickshake was a meal in itself! Decades ago, Kris, my US roommate, bagged Australian milkshakes and tried to make me a malt thickshake to prove how ours were so pathetic. I’ve never had a proper American malted shake before, and she was SOOOO right! So right that I sent an email to her in Australia to tell her how fabulous they were and how right she was all those years ago 😉

This morning I was up bright and early to catch the 8:00 am shuttle to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Dave was also on the same shuttle; he was flying Alaska Airlines to San Diego, while I was on American Airlines to Dallas Fort Worth.

I checked in at the American counter and asked where the lounge was — the check-in lady laughed as she sputtered that they didn’t have a lounge at that airport and hadn’t had for 13 years. She said American only had two gates at Sea-Tac. So I wandered into the food and shops area and had a breakfast quesadilla from a Mexican place — scrambled eggs, minced chorizo, and sprinkling of cheese on a half tortilla, folded over and put in a sandwich press. Within a minute it was done, and cut into three, ready for me to eat with some hot salsa and sour cream. It wasn’t bad!

Sea-Tac provides power to the waiting areas at the gates really well. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo, but in essence, they have a set of seats with power outlets and USB power in a panel under the seats; the power is supplied to several of these panels in a set of seats from a single cord off a pillar. This means that quite a few people can power devices at the same time and not fight over a power outlet.

The plane I was on

The flight took off pretty much on time, and I chatted with the chap next to me — he lives in Spokane, WA and works for Boeing. He was on his way to Seville in Spain to do an audit on one of Boeing’s suppliers. As we were flying along he was pointing out the various mountains, ranges, rivers, etc., which was great as I would’ve only been guessing what was what. It was a perfectly clear day and Mt Rainier was in all its glory. We also passed over the very wide Columbia River and the Snake River in Idaho, and the chap (I never did get his name) told me some of the geological history of some of those landforms. He’s hiked in many of the areas he was pointing out, and he swapped seats with me a few times when we were near Mt Rainier so I could get some photos.

Columbia River

As an aside, American Airlines First Class (equivalent to Business Class in Australia) served us a hot meal of blackened BBQ prawns (they were really nice and fresh, which is hard to do with prawns if they’ve been cooked or left sitting too long) and grits and a corn and bean mix — all on proper china and with metal cutlery and a real glass for wine! I thought all US flights had banned all that years ago, so it was nice to see its return.

The flight was uneventful — those 4 hours sure go by faster if you have someone interesting to talk to. When we were about 175 miles out from Dallas (the pilot told us how far — I sure didn’t know!), the pilot told us we’d be circling round a big storm and coming in from the south instead of the north-west and that would add about 10 minutes to our trip. Very soon after we were skirting alongside a MASSIVE cloud formation and could see why we were going around it. Put it this way, the clouds were higher than we were, and we were flying at 35,000 ft. They were BIG anvil-shaped clouds, probably 40,000+ ft high (no pictures, unfortunately). I think everyone who saw those clouds was really pleased the pilot went around! Our landing at Dallas Fort Worth was through some very thick lower level cloud, and it was grey and threatening on our arrival.

After picking up my bags and getting on the shuttle bus to the rental car centre, I got my rental car and got on the road heading south out of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It was still very grey and threatening, with very low clouds. Those clouds got darker and darker, and yes, the day was ending too, but those clouds were quite ominous.

As I was driving and wondering where to pull in for the night, an emergency alert came over the car radio about severe thunderstorms, quarter-sized hail (about 20c piece), 60 mph (110 km/h) winds etc. It was for a particular county, but I figured if my car radio had picked it up then it might be close-ish. So I beetled on down the Interstate until I saw a hotel chain I’ve stayed at before, in Waxahachie. My intention was always to stay somewhere south of Dallas and north of Waco, so that fitted. I’m pretty sure the storm that the radio had warned those in the area about was the same one we’d gone around an hour or so earlier in the plane.

I’m now ensconced in my room with NO intention of going out until I leave tomorrow; I’m on the second floor of a 4-storey hotel, and my car is parked away from trees with its nose just under an awning right up close to the building, so here’s hoping the storm warning was for somewhere else and that all is safe tonight and in the morning. That said, in the past few minutes there have been some decent thunder rumblings….

Oh, and someone has WAY too much time on their hands… this was in the bathroom of the hotel I stayed at in Waxahachie:

Yes, it was a towel folded into an elephant. Not sure about the tap position though… 😉

No doubt today’s missive will be quite a bit shorter as we start the first day of the first conference today. I’ll be posting my conference summaries on my professional blog: http://cybertext.wordpress.com.

After the brilliant sleep I had on Saturday night, last night’s was terrible. It took ages to fall asleep, and the sleep I did have was in fits and starts — it seemed like I was awake most of the night, but in a semi-conscious state, not fully awake as jet lag tends to do. Anyhoo… I’m up now and showered and almost ready to wander downstairs for breakfast and conference registration. The first session starts at 9, in an hour’s time.

More later…

Well, as it happened, there wasn’t much more to my day. It was filled with conference stuff. I ended up having one of the OMG plums for dinner as I had eaten well all day, wrote up my blog piece about the conference and went to bed.

• ConveyUX Conference: Day 1: 4 March 2013
• ConveyUX Conference: Day 2: 5 March 2013
• ConveyUX Conference: Day 3: 6 March 2013. This last night of the conference a big group of us (about 40) who were already here for the next conference (Thursday and Friday) went out to dinner at a brew pub in the Pacific Place Mall in Seattle. I had the ‘Kobe black and bleu’ beef burger with garlic fries…. those garlic fries had LOADS of REAL garlic in them and were to die for. The burger was good too, but not ‘OMG’ good like those fries!
• WritersUA Conference: Day 1: 7 March 2013
• WritersUA Conference: Day 2: 8 March 2013

TWELVE hours’ sleep!!! Wow! That was the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. Obviously I really needed it, and I’ve woken up fresh and ready to enjoy today, my one day off this trip.

First up, I’m meeting an Aussie friend who’s been living in Seattle the past 4 or so years. He’s got to be at the airport early in the afternoon, so we’ll just catch up for a short time. Then I might wander down to Pike Place Markets and visit a quilt shop close to there 😉 The weather today is sunny (a little cloud); currently 6C, with an expected maximum of 10C — quite a change from the 30+C weather we’ve had at home!

More later…

Later…

The weather stayed fine. Cold and a bit cloudy, but no rain. Quite a bit of sunshine, in fact. I caught up with my friend Craig for an hour or so (he had to pick up some people from the airport, so our time for catching up was limited). However, he did show me the house where he was housesitting. OMG. What a magnificent house overlooking Lake Washington! Other than the few minutes in the house and stopping into a Starbucks for a smoothie each, we also went up to a high point overlooking Seattle (Kerry Park?), and spent the rest of the time driving between those places. It was good to see him again. Can’t believe he’s been living here for 7 years already — his Aussie accent is as strong as ever.

View of Seattle from Kerry Park

View from Kerry Park, Seattle

The ‘OMG’ kitchen

After Craig dropped me back at the hotel, I walked down to Pike Place Markets. I tell you what — a bit of sunshine brings out EVERYBODY in Seattle! The walk was pretty packed with people, as were the markets. My first stop was a quilt shop in the market area. I can’t believe the normal (not sale) price of fabric in the US — batiks were $10.95 a yard (they’re about $25 a metre in Australia), and even Australian Aboriginal fabric was only $12 a yard (about $24 a metre in Australia). I bought some replacement rotary cutter blades and a pattern and that was all. It’s too early for me to consider buying fabric as I need to know how much room I have in my luggage and I won’t know that until later next week. That’s assuming I buy any fabric at all — I really do have a decent ‘stash’ 😉

At the pasta stand, I tried the chocolate pasta (linguine). MMMMmmmm. Then the habanero pasta curls. Wow! having the chilli after the chocolate made my mouth sing with wonderful taste harmonies. There’s nothing quite like chilli and chocolate together.

I stopped at the Chukar Cherries stand in the markets and tasted a milk chocolate cherry. It was also fabulous straight after the chilli pasta. I bought a packet of milk chocolate coated cherries. They *might* make it home… they might not too 😉 And I bought two ENORMOUS plums to have in the hotel room. They were called ‘OMG Plums’ and they were — OMG in size and in taste; they were just delicious.

The OMG plums, with a coffee container to show the size

One of the fruit and vege stands at Pike Place Markets

I had a late lunch (which was also my breakfast) at Lowells in the Pike Place Markets. And of course, I couldn’t go past the wild, fresh King Salmon sandwich! It was great.

King Salmon sandwich

View of Seattle from 3rd floor at Lowells, Pike Place Markets

The walk back to the hotel was still filled with people, even though it was well after 3:30pm. There were some strange costumes on the ComicCon people, and quite a lot of buskers (bagpipes, sax, clarinet, drums made from upturned buckets, steel drums, etc.). All sounded pretty good as I was walking by. There was also a human statue dressed like an admiral or sea captain from the 1700s all done up in an aged copper (green) patina. I thought it *was* a statue, but then I saw him wink at a homeless guy who was staring at him in fascination 😉

Back in the hotel now. We have a meet and greet function in the lobby bar in a couple of hours, so I’ll upload my photos from my camera and sort them all out, as well as write some reviews for TripAdvisor.

More later…

Meet and greet was good — met up with some old friends and made some new ones. Unfortunately, not many there, considering that 130 are registered for the conference. There were perhaps 10 or 15 at the meet and greet. And from all over — Australia, UK, Russia, South Carolina, Iowa, California, etc. Afterwards, 6 of us (4 oldies, 2 newbies) went for a meal at Dragonfish Asian restaurant. Great meals — full of flavour, and excellent cocktails. I had the Garlic Ginger Chili Chicken and Prawns (with rice noodles) ($9) and a plate of Vegetable Spring Rolls ($2.95 happy hour price after 9pm) and a to-die-for Kaffir Lime Chi-chi cocktail ($9), which was ‘lemongrass and kaffir-lime-leaf infused vodka, fresh lime and creamy coconut puree’. It was ALL delicious.

Back to hotel before 11 pm. We start the conference tomorrow with registration and breakfast at 8:30 and the first session at 9.

This is going to be the LONGEST day. I leave Melbourne before I arrive in Los Angeles! And once I get to LA, I have about a 6-hour wait for my flight to Seattle. I’ve booked a day rate at a local hotel to shower and to get my phone sorted out (I’ll get a US SIM and a pay-per-day plan from T-Mobile).

The day started out OK, with a bit of bubbling excitement about the First Class upgrade. Not only is it an upgrade on the plane, there’s also a different Qantas Lounge at the airport for First Class passengers. So I was intrigued to see what all the fuss was about.

Alas, it was not to be…

I got to the Qantas check-in counter, and asked about my upgrade. The lady couldn’t find it in the system, She called a few people, and yes, it had happened, but no ticketing had been issued for it. After a few more phone calls, the Frequent Flyer people admitted they’d ‘made a mistake’ and I shouldn’t have been upgraded as there are NO available seats in First on this flight! They’ve since refunded my points they deducted for the upgrade. All this took about 40 minutes at the counter, so I feel for the other passengers in line waiting to be dealt with as one check-in person was out of action for all that time.

Just to prove I had the upgrade for a brief moment in time, here’s a screen shot from my FF account:

We board in about an hour, so I’ll finish for now and update this post for the same date once I arrive in the US.

Update:

Qantas QF93 MEL-LAX: My choice for dinner was potato and leek soup, followed by a lightly crumbed and pan-fried thick pork fillet, with carrots and a stack of potato slices. Dessert — yoghurt ice cream with rhubarb compote. Shiraz and a sticky wine with dessert. For breakfast, I chose yoghurt and buttermilk pancakes with an apple/cinnamon compote and mascarpone. Yummo!

I sat next to a lovely lady on the flight — she was on an incredibly long haul: Melbourne to Los Angeles, then about a 5-hour wait for an Air Canada flight to Montreal, then another wait before another flight to Monckton, New Brunswick. She wasn’t due to land in Monckton until after midnight. Then she has Sunday to recuperate before starting a tough week’s work, and then repeating the flight but in the opposite direction a week later. I sure don’t envy her!

Landed at LAX at 6:30 am. Very uneventful and calm flight across. As per usual I did no more than cat nap (if that), though as I was laying flat, I did rest. The new ‘mattresses’ are great at removing some of the lumps and bumps of the seats — they looked like rolled up swags, so that’s what I called them and the cabin crew thought that was a great name. I have no idea why no-one had ever thought of it… they just look like swags used in the bush. But then again, maybe none of the cabin crew has ever roughed it in the bush in a swag ;-). However, they’ve no doubt all sung Waltzing Matilda at some point. The light doona replacements for the blankets were good too. Thin, but not too hot or too cold.

The line for Immigration at LAX was quite long and we were in it for about 45 mins. Bags were piled up three deep on the baggage carousel and well and truly waiting for us. No delays here with the baggage handlers — the hold-up was the lack of enough Immigration guys to deal with the number of flights (there were three flights from Australia [two A380s from MEL and SYD respectively and a 747 from Brisbane] and one from South America that all landed within a few minutes of each other and we all had to be processed. Cleared Customs with no hassles, then dropped bags for transit to Seattle.

Called the Hacienda Hotel where I’d taken the day rate, and got picked up by their shuttle bus. The room was ordinary, but hey, I wasn’t staying long! Just long enough to have a shower, quickly check email, and to get to the T-Mobile store close by to get my phone sorted out (new SIM, activation for two weeks).

Hacienda Hotel bathroom – note the artful flower arrangements. Who does THAT anymore? and then there’s the BRIGHT orange walls, which didn’t come out so bright in this photo

The phone didn’t take long, but that’s ‘cos I helped out the girl serving me. Initially we couldn’t get internet access and I pulled out a notebook from last week where I’d jotted down all the Access Point Number data from last year when I went through the same process in Dallas. Voila! It worked! She didn’t have a clue, and had I not had that info she would’ve had to call Support and spend a lot of time with them trying to figure out what was wrong.

But here’s the thing. I was at the T-Mobile store when it opened at 10 am. I was the first customer in the store and there were two girls on duty. The one who dealt with me was quite young (mid 20s at the outside). And she REEKED of alcohol! She’d probably had a late night out partying the night before, but what on earth made her think that it would be a good idea to come to work smelling like a distillery? The work she does means that she’s often in fairly close (like, breath-smelling distance) contact with the customer. And this customer didn’t like it one little bit.

After getting my phone sorted, I caught the hotel shuttle back to LAX and to the Alaska Airlines terminal. My fare meant that I had access to the ‘Board Room’, their lounge.

View from the Alaska airlines ‘Board Room’ at LAX

It’s only when you sample US airline lounges that you realise how good we have it with what we get at the Qantas lounges. And how good we get it on the Qantas domestic flights too. That said, the Alaska Air experience on the flight to Seattle wasn’t too bad, but overall US domestic airlines aren’t a patch on what we get in Australia (at least with Qantas). And don’t get me started on the security checks…

The flight to Seattle left on time and arrived on time. That’s a first for me in the US in a long time! I found the shuttle service into the city (go up a floor, across a walkbridge, then down a floor…), and got dropped off right at the door of the hotel where I’ll be staying for the next week.

On the way to the hotel, we passed some weirdly dressed people — it seems ComicCon is on at the Seattle Convention Center, which is close to the hotel. The strangest figure I saw was someone riding a unicycle on the footpath, with a Darth Vader mask on, wearing a brown skirt, and with a set of bagpipes under his/her arm!

Update: Seen on Facebook, April 2013 — I knew I wasn’t seeing things!

It’s currently 8 pm Saturday night in Seattle, which is 12 noon Sunday in Western Australia. That means it’s been some 54 hours of elapsed time since I left home, and I’ve had about 5 hours sleep in that entire time. I think I need to go to bed!

Oh, and Seattle? Grey, cloudy, rainy when I arrived. No surprises there!

The day started off with an uneventful drive to Perth, though there was more traffic congestion near the Roe Hwy off ramp, Tonkin Hwy intersection with Roe, and the Tonkin Hwy intersection with Leach Hwy and Gt Eastern Hwy than I expected for the day of the week and time of the day. So, a drive that normally takes just a tad over 1.5 hours took 2 hours. Being one of those people who’d rather be two hours early to something than 1 minute late, that wasn’t a problem as I’d allowed plenty of contingency time 😉

On the drive up to Perth, I got a text message from Qantas — my Frequent Flyer points upgrade request for the long flight across the Pacific had come through! So I will experience my first (and likely only) taste of flying FIRST class on an A380. How good is that?!

The Qantas Lounge at Perth Domestic Airport was packed — as usual. They’ve extended it a couple of times in the past 5 years, but nothing they do seems able to cater for the sheer (increasing) volume of passengers passing through the airport. The wireless connection on my phone in the lounge reported as ‘good’, but I couldn’t get emails, Tweets etc. so I turned it off and went back to Telstra’s 3G and was able to get my stuff then. I suspect they designed the lounge and communications upgrade a few years ago long before anyone thought that wireless connections would be as ubiquitous as they are on phones. I doubt the system could handle it. Absolutely everyone I saw in the lounge was looking at their phones, tablets, etc.

The flight to Melbourne left about 25 minutes late but arrived pretty much on time. I was in Business class and we were fed dinner during the flight — roasted tomato soup with sourdough bread (or wholemeal roll), Spanish chicken with chorizo, polenta, and wilted spinach and a delicious tomato-based sauce, followed by a decadent Maggie Beer passionfruit icecream with almond tuilles. Oh, and all washed down with a couple of glasses of a 2010 Heathcote Shiraz, and a delicious sticky dessert wine (a noble rot wine of some sort). Real china crockery, real glass glasses, and real metal cutlery. Love you, Qantas!

I started to watch ‘Lincoln’ but gave up after about 25 mins — US politics of the 1860s just didn’t interest me and I found it hard to get into. So I watched some mindless drivel instead — as you do 😉 It was a Kevin James movie (Here comes the boom’?) about a teacher who takes up mixed martial arts fighting to save the school’s music program. Light and fluffy. Perfect for a flight of about 3.5 hours.

As I mentioned earlier, we arrived on time into Melbourne. There were NO other baggage carousels with people waiting for bags. I mention this because it took nearly an HOUR for our bags to get offloaded from the plane! I went to the baggage claim area and the people there told me it was because of delayed flights from Sydney as a result of storms there and that’s why our bags were delayed. But there were NO people at any other baggage carousel. Ours was the ONLY flight waiting for bags. So I think the Sydney excuse was a fob off for some other reason our bags took so long to come off the plane. The other thing about baggage claim is that the bags just came out willy-nilly. It used to be that they offloaded the Business class bags first… guess that doesn’t happen anymore, or else the baggage handlers were just beetling to get the bags off, no matter the order.

As a result, I didn’t get to the hotel until nearly 9 pm Melbourne time, after arriving at 7:30. The hotel is right at the airport, about 100 m from the terminals, so there was no travel distance to deal with.

My wake-up call is booked for 6 am tomorrow (3 am Perth time!), for the next part of the journey — the long haul to Seattle via Los Angeles. By tomorrow night, I will be sleeping in Seattle (hopefully not sleepless in Seattle 😉 )