Transportation

Something told me I shouldn't enroll in Ali Edwards' 31 Things class right before starting my new job in Seattle.  Now my job is so consuming that it seems to be the only relevant thing in my life.

Take this prompt transportation, for example.  Now the immediate thing that comes to mind is my weekly commute to Seattle.  It's actually very easy.  I thought it would be more difficult.  Getting up earlier than I'm used to, and a long door-to-door workday.  But it has not been a problem at all.  I just don't like getting to the airport way too early, which has been the trend so far.

The first couple of weeks I chose an 8am flight out of PDX.  I fly with no luggage and no laptop, so after printing my boarding pass at home, I just head straight for the TSA checkpoint.  PDX has an express lane just for Seattle passengers, so I'm through in a relative jiffy, and head for my gate.  There's a set of gates that's only for Seattle passengers as well.  I know this because there is a sign mounted to the wall, that says "Seattle shuttle service" or something like that.  So I was getting to my gate way too early and decided that a 7:30am flight is better for me.

Unfortunately last week we had sno-poc, and the night before my commute I figured out that I could not get the car out of the driveway.  So I had to call a car service, and the driver insisted on getting me to the airport way too early, yet again.  I was also dismayed when I got the receipt and it said "It's All About You Luxury Transportation" at the top, which doesn't look well on an expense report that is getting charged to the government.

But back to Seattle.  After my very short flight, I head out of SEA-TAC and take a Yellow Cab taxi to the office.  This is probably more expensive than a rental car, but it's way more efficient.  We can take the carpool lane and I'm at the office in 30 minutes, which would definitely not be the case if I rented a car.

Because of the carpool lane, there's usually someone at the office who wants to give me a ride back to the airport, since it saves that person time commuting home as well.  This, however, often gets me back to SEA-TAC way too early, if I had planned to work late and scheduled a flight accordingly.

Then again, SEA-TAC TSA seems to see me coming, and then throws themselves into dead slug mode, so I spend an incredible amount of time waiting in line even if there are only 5-10 people in front of me, which is pretty much all there ever are.  This helps to kill a lot of time that I could otherwise use eating my dinner or getting a standby slot for an earlier flight.  Thank goodness.

After a short flight home, I practically run to my car which is in short term parking and I'm home 30 minutes later and able to tuck Libby and Mae into bed.