Well, I’m finally back from Long Beach, and not a day too soon. As you’ll recall, at the beginning of the week I posted an itinerary on my blog for my trip to Long Beach for the October State PTA Board of Managers Meeting. Although some productive decisions were made, a vast number of factors combined together to make it the worst trip I have ever taken.

First of all, I’m sure that if you’ve been hearing the national news, you’ve heard about those fires down in Southern California? Those ones which has caused over $1 billion in damage, and which they suspect someone deliberately lit and they’re offering a $70,000 reward for information on? Well, I never saw the fires, but oh boy, did I see the smoke. When I landed on Wednesday afternoon in LAX, the blood-red sun was setting. On the Super Shuttle ride from LAX to Long Beach, the driver had the radio on and I learned everything that I needed to know (and then some) about the fires. But the smoke was everywhere.

And I was to become a victim of it. You’ll recall that I had been fighting a fight with my allergies? At the beginning of the week, I had practically conquered them to the point of an almost non-existent nuisance. But Thursday morning…BAM! My nose was clogging up worse than any kitchen sink you might imagine. During my two meetings on Thursday, I kept having to continuously blow my nose, making myself sound disgusting and building a big mess of tissues. I spent $10 of my own money on some Sudafed in the gift shop, but that didn’t help too much. Apparently, even though the whole hotel was air conditioned, that didn’t eliminate everything in the smoke, and that stuff was irritating me pretty badly.

Yesterday (Friday), I’m not sure if the smoke was clearer (the sunset Friday evening was yellow-orange instead of red), but my nose wasn’t quite as active as it had been on Thursday, but the congestion had moved into my throat, forcing me to buy Robitussin to deal with that. Of course, I got off to a bad start on Friday when I pulled something in my left leg in the morning when I was trying to turn off the alarm clock. It wasn’t broken or sprained, because (eventually) I could still walk on it, but it really hurt when I did it and still hurts a little bit as I’m typing this. However, I got through Friday, which included me reading an inspiration for the board meeting (which everyone loved), and by Noon, the meeting was over, I packed up my room and checked out. A group of us from State PTA got on a Super Shuttle to head back to LAX, and I got off at Terminal 6 for Virgin America.

When I got to the counter, my flight was listed as being on time, with a 4 PM departure scheduled. Great, so I checked in my bags, went through security, and then got myself some lunch at one of the restaurants. Then I got to my gate at about 3:00, and see a one-hour delay listed, the new scheduled departure is 5:00 PM. By the time 4 PM rolls around, another half hour has been added to the delay, making the new scheduled departure 5:30 PM. Apparently the word is that the plane hadn’t left San Francisco yet–it had had a flat tire. Later on, this story was revised to include engine trouble, so I’m not sure what the story was, but by the time 4:30 rolled around, the lady at the counter announced that the flight had been cancelled, and then the chaos started! Almost everyone got up and swarmed around the counter, and the lady at the counter kept trying to tell people to sit back down until she could figure out what to do, etc. I stayed sitting down, playing Solitaire on my computer, thinking that I would just wait and see what happened while many of the others tried to get themselves onto other flights.

The Virgin America folks tried to call other airlines to see if they could move us onto other flights heading into San Francisco, but apparently the other flights were completely full, including Virgin America’s next flight into San Francisco (which left at 6:45). By the time 6 PM rolled around, they announced that they would be getting another Virgin America plane to fly in, and it would be leaving for San Francisco between 10-10:30 PM. They told us to get into two lines, where we could either agree to be on the 10:30 PM plane, get a meal voucher, and we would get a $100 credit for future Virgin America flights, or else others could cancel and get on any Virgin America flight the next day, plus the $100 credit. Not having any other option, I consented to take the 10:30 flight and got my meal voucher. I laughed when I saw that my voucher was good for a whopping $10. You know this is an airport, right? PTA gives me $10 per diem for breakfast, and $25 for dinner. For dinner, I was able to get a hot dog combo dinner, which consisted of a hot dog, a small thing of fries, and a drink, and even then, that cost $12.

So I waited, and waited, and waited. I had not brought that much stuff with me to entertain myself–the few worksheets I had pulled from my school backpack to do on the plane were finished, I had lost 22 games in a row of computer Solitaire (I think I have a conspiracy theory against computer Solitaire), and I had walked within the halls of the gates so much I was completely bored of them. By 10 PM, I consented to watching the people who are supposed to help guide the plane into the gate play an improvised game of soccer, which they continued doing for half an hour, and I continued watching them for that long too.

The plane had been scheduled to depart at 10:30 PM, instead it pulled into the gate at 10:40 PM, and we watched as the disgruntled folks from San Francisco who had been messed up by the plane walked out into the terminal, and then waited for the plane to be cleaned, catered, refueled, etc. We finally boarded at 11 PM, and took off shortly afterwards, a full seven hours after the scheduled departure time. I spent a full nine hours in the LAX terminal yesterday, which meant that this trip beat out the previous long delay that I had suffered back in 2004 in Minneapolis (that plane had only left five hours late and kept my father and I at the terminal for seven and a half hours). We landed at SFO this morning at 12:30 AM, and I got home and to bed around 1:20 AM this morning.

I slept in, which is why I missed phpBB Weekly #036 this morning, and am not going to the peace march in San Francisco that I had been hoping to go to. I have not, as of yet, installed Leopard, but I’ll probably get started on that soon. And I am very glad that I wasn’t relying on making it to the Leopard launch event tomorrow. All in all, I am just very glad to be back home and away from all of the chaos that Long Beach caused this week.

Tags: fires, horrible, LAX, Long Beach, nasal, Personal, rant, sinus, smoke, trip, Virgin America

It’s the last week of October, and that means I’m hitting the road again for another State PTA Board of Managers meeting. The October meeting is traditionally the Convention Orientation/Preparation meeting, where we go to the Convention Center to plan everything out, so we’re in Long Beach (off of Los Angeles) this time, the same place where the Convention will be in May. However, I won’t be at these meetings for as long as the July meeting was (since the July meeting was a longer meeting for orientation, etc.).

As I did in August, I will be traveling via the wonderful (and cheap) Virgin America from SFO to LAX and back. On Wednesday, right after school, I will be rushing to the airport to check in for flight VX 851, which leaves SFO at 4:15 PM and arrives at LAX at 5:40 PM. From there, I’ll be catching a Super Shuttle to get me to the Westin Long Beach (yeah, PTA puts us up in nice hotels).

Hopefully I’ll make it there in time to go to the Convention Management Committee meeting that night at 7:30 PM. As one of the two student representatives, we’re both in charge of the first-day Student Orientation at Convention, which is how we ended up on the committee. After that two-hour meeting ends, I can happily go off to sleep after a long day of both school and travel.

On Thursday morning, bright and early, will be the Student Involvement Committee meeting starting at 7 AM (with breakfast provided), and which will end at 8:45. That will then be followed by the Communications Commission, which will meet from 9 AM-3 PM, although that will be interrupted from Noon-1:30 PM with lunch and a Board of Managers group picture. However, I’ll have the rest of the day to myself after 3 PM, which should probably give me a good chance to catch up on homework.

Another early morning on Friday, with Breakfast provided at 7 AM, along with a Board Development activity. The Board of Managers meeting will then start at 9 AM, and I’m going to be responsible for opening the meeting with an inspiration. I’ve written kind of a “non-standard” inspiration which will still hopefully go all right. The meeting is expected to end by Noon. I’ll then have a chance to get myself some lunch before Super Shuttle picks me up to head back to the airport to catch Virgin America flight VX 852, which departs LAX at 4:00 PM and arrives at SFO at 5:20 PM.

I will not be going to the Leopard launch event at my local Apple Store on Friday, because as you can see, I get in a little bit late for that, and because I had a bit of an, erm, stressful experience at the iPhone launch event four months ago. However, I’ve pre-ordered Leopard from Apple.com, which means it should be here, waiting for me to install it when I get back home!

So anyway, there’s my itinerary, and I’m sure that within a few hours, Skoker will have commented with every single insignificant detail about the airplanes I’m going on, because that’s what he likes to do. Maybe by now all of Virgin America’s fancy computer stuff will be on, and I can post a more full review of it here on W87.info! We’ll see…

Tags: Apple Store, itinerary, Mac OS X Leopard, meeting, PTA, Super Shuttle, Virgin America

And I’m going with them! That’s right. Every other year, the California State PTA holds a district PTA officers training for a weekend at UCLA, called PTA U. I’ll be going with them–partially to get a bit more training, which you can never have too much of, and partially to get the experience of spending nights in a college dorm–on the cheap! Most colleges have programs to allow prospective new students to experience life in a dorm for a night, but it usually costs a lot of money. However, I’ll get to experience sleeping in a dorm at UCLA for two nights–for nothing! Oh, and travel costs and meals are taken care of as well. See, PTA student involvement DOES have perks!

I also won’t be going alone. As the Nominating Committee chairman last year, I kind of reeled in my mom to be District PTA Treasurer this year, so she’ll also be going down to UCLA, and we’ll be rooming together as well. Our new president, Deborah Kemper (whom I also reeled in) will also be going from our district.

So, as is usual on this blog, I’m supposed to share my travel itinerary. I know that Skoker, who is an airplane addict, will be interested to note that we’ll be flying down tomorrow on the brand new airline Virgin America. So yes, I guess I’ll get to officially determine if they’re any good, particularly given how cheap their flights are. So, here’s the details…
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Tags: itinerary, LAX, Los Angeles, PTA, training, travel, trip, UCLA, Virgin America