Home to traffic

Ah yes, how great it is to be home. On Friday I arrived in Portland and took a taxi from the airport to my hotel downtown. We were breezing along when all of a sudden we slowed down to about 30 mph. I realized I had landed just in time to hit Friday rush hour traffic and prepared for a long wait. As I got comfortable the cabbie turned around and in his broken English tried to explain that there was an accident ahead. I told him I thought it was just rush hour and he said oh no, Portland doesn't have rush hour traffic. Uh, ok.

We do, however, have rush hour traffic here. In a great welcome back it took me 45 minutes on the freeway to get to work this morning. After listening to too many commercials on the radio I turned on American Idiot, sipped my latte and rocked my way into the office. Strangely I was more relaxed after that than I would have been just listening to my morning KFOG.

I did a bunch of waiting around yesterday too. Because of a bomb scare the terminal at Oakland Airport was closed for a couple of hours. Luckily our flight out of Portland was running late so we hadn't left when the Oakland airport closed down. I shudder to think that we'd have landed in San Jose or San Francisco or turned around back to Portland. We ended up taxiing to another gate and people were let off the plane - and then told immediately to get back on because we'd gotten clearance. In all I think we were delayed only about two hours. Plus, luggage retrieval was even more crapped up than normal in Oakland. You'd think with the brand spanking new area in the terminal they would have made things more convenient but noooo, not in Oakland! It took about 45 minutes to get our stuff, then the wait for the shuttle, then waiting in line to pay, then it was perfectly timed to hit afternoon rush hour! Luckily it was a holiday and not as bad as normal.

But I got home too late to take a nap!