They had better hurry up and discover me soon, they are running out of time. My plane leaves in half an hour, and it will be a lot more inconvenient for them once I’ve left the country.
As a pleasant change, I nearly got a decent night’s sleep last night. I wasn’t at the hotel anymore but was staying with friends. They have quite the party house and have had a lot of people staying with them over the long weekend. I was lucky to get any time there. But it was a fun group of people.
It was surprisingly easy to drop off the rental car. Hertz had asked me to be there an hour before I was due. I’m glad I ignored that and had time to have a home-cooked breakfast with friends. I showed up twenty minutes before the deadline. And all I really needed to do was park the car. A nice man waved a bar code reader and gave me a receipt. I suppose it would have been more difficult if I hadn’t picked up cheap American gas before arrival. However, it was also a gas guzzling American car, so it balances out.
My usual souvenir duty-free alcohol purchase had a little trouble. I wasn’t sure what local beverage to get. It can’t be wine (despite a Californian specialty), because that will spoil after opening, and this is something that I want to last. (At a Trader Joe’s yesterday I saw a good bottle of Merlot for $2. Curse you duty limit!) It can’t be beer because that is too… common. So I decided to splurge a bit and get a scotch, bottled in Scotland. But I can claim some locality because it was aged in American oak casks. I have a friend who is a Scotch connoisseur, and it would be nice to know what scotch distillery is his favored brand. He’s going to be drinking this more than I am.
I’ll be boarding soon. Los Angeles airport hasn’t been as bad as people have been telling me it would be. Things have been fairly efficient. I did help by checking in on-line yesterday. I even got to pick my seat on the plane so that I am in a window on the mountain side of the aircraft. (And they wanted to give me the window in the emergency exit row on the wrong side. Pft.)
Now I have a relaxing flight back and then a three hour drive home. Maybe I can cut that last part down a bit by driving like a maniac. How are the roads on the QE2?