Travelling Is Hard Work!
If you haven’t suspected by my writings I will mention that I am well into my senior years. These days I prefer to stay home as much as I can and I don’t mind spending a fair amount of time sitting in a chair, taking in the scenery, contentedly doing nothing. But the nieces texted us on our iPad and put a bee in our bonnets - why, they said, don’t we take a few days in October or November, come down to Seattle and visit them and their Dad, Ray (our brother-in-law)…
We seldom travel. Until we sold our flock of sheep and our last guardian dog walked over the rainbow bridge we had many excuses to keep us home. Now it’s just the 3 Border Collies - but one is 15, a kennel would be hard on him. So our immediate reaction to this invitation was, hmmmm, we’ll think about it…. maybe not. But the idea had taken hold and my son offered to come up near the end of October to do some bow hunting, take care of our dogs, and watch the place if we wanted to go. The fact that October 23rd would be Rays 84th birthday was the clincher.
So out came the iPad and the search for plane tickets began. It is a short flight to Seattle but a long day of travel because the airlines want you through security a few hours before flight time and our airport is a 2.5 hour drive away. In the end there was only one choice for a direct flight, on Alaska Air, and it was near perfect for timing - daylight driving hours being another parameter of our search. I began the online process to book our flight and a park-and-ride space for our car. This is probably an easy process for the seasoned traveller. For me, not so much.
For many years I’ve had a flip phone, $10/month, no internet access, mainly kept in case of a roadside emergency. Since flip phones do not work in the US and pay phones are a thing of the past we decided we needed to get a newer cell phone. We should have taken a bit of time to learn how to use it. The first thing our new phone did for us was provide a lady on the map app to guide us to our parking garage in Nisku - it wasn’t where we thought it should be. “Make a U-turn and proceed to destination,” she said. That makes no sense, we thought. What does she mean “proceed”? We were sure we should be going the other way. So we stopped to ask directions the old fashioned way. Turned out the app lady was right. Lesson 1 - We need to learn to trust a disembodied voice from a cell tower. Don’t laugh, there’s a first time for everything, some people just have that first time later than others.
The Sea-Tac airport is like a city in itself with a maze of people and shops. They could stand to upgrade their signage. Could also use some moving sidewalks. We walked what seemed like a mile until we finally located Ground Transportation. Ray suggested we take an Uber to his place. We found the Uber pick-up area just beyond the taxi stand. There was a large group of people standing around staring at their phones, but not a single Uber in sight. Lesson 2 - You can’t get an Uber unless you have the Uber app. And apparently there’s accounts connected with that so you can’t ask to borrow someone else’s phone to use the app. So much for Uber. We went back to the taxi stand where a kind and chatty fellow assured us their prices were competitive, and they were.
Seattle is a huge city built on steep hills. Beautiful in many ways, just another city in others, a kaleidoscope of wealth and poverty. It was full of flowers, ivy, greenery, water ways, quaint neighbourhoods, condos, boats, office towers, construction areas, homeless tent settlements, bridges, shops, restaurants… Google lives there taking up a whole city block. We had a great visit with Ray and our nieces - were wined and dined and ferried about like visiting royalty, a wonderful connection with family we seldom see in person.
We booked a taxi for our return to the SeaTac airport and breezed through security, found our gate, had a snack and waited to board. After a quick flight we were ushered quickly through customs because I use a cane and there we were, sitting on a bench at the luggage carousels, trying to navigate our new phone again. Our parking garage had instructed us to phone as soon as we arrived so they could fetch our car and warm it up. Problem & Lesson 3 - Do you have to dial one before the number when you’re in the area of the call but your cell number is not? Tried both ways and got through to a phone tree. But then - “Press zero”, they said, to reach the correct department. Zero! How? The number keyboard was gone! (Lesson 4 -To get the dial pad to reappear you touch on a wee square full of dots). The other option was to text. I opened Messenger and there was no key board, no area to write! How does that work? (Lesson 5 - To write a text you have to touch on a square with what’s supposed to be a pen angled in the corner to bring the keyboard up). So we sat on a bench arguing about which one of us knew better and finally, we don’t really know how, we connected. The bus to Park & Go arrived within minutes. Excellent service and less costly than the gas needed for a two way trip to the airport.
My son thought our phone problems were hilarious. “Just play around with it,” he said. “You can’t wreck it.” Have we done that yet? No. Our phone never rings. I had to ask someone to call just so I’d know what it sounds like. People say we’ll love it once we get used to it - maybe. Are we going to fly away again any time soon? We’re in no rush. Being at our destination was great, but the travelling part was hard work!
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November 11, 2023
Great Aunt Sophie’s Fancy Dishes
