Gallifrey One 2024: The Trip
Feb. 26th, 2024 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverYay, Gallifrey One! This one's going to take three posts, one about the trip itself, one about the con, and one about the Deathmatch. Maybe more if I come up with anything else. I hope I get to all of these posts.
The trip itself was eventful. As in lots of things going wrong, many of them my fault. :P So here goes.
Just like last year, we chose to take a train down to LA. This is a 24-hour journey and is more expensive than traveling by air, but is far more comfortable and relaxing, since we book a sleeping car, and doesn't have you cooped up with a hundred possibly-COVID-infected passengers. With a sleeping car, all meals are included and the food on the Amtrak Coast Starlight is frankly amazing. It isn't just microwaved pre-packaged food like they have on some of the East Coast trains; they have actual chefs. Maybe next year we'll consider flying again, but I'm really enjoying the train trip.
About three weeks before the trip, Amtrak sent me an email saying that the train station in my town (call it B) wasn't going to be available due to work on the tracks, so we would need to catch it in town A by going to the station in B and they would shuttle us to A. The email said to call CS to verify, so we did, and after checking, the CS agent said yes, arrive at B's station at the usual time and we'd be shuttled up to A. This didn't make sense to me, because A is before B on the route - this plan should get us to A two hours after the train leaves it. However, the lady checked again and said yes, the plan she gave was correct.
This didn't sit well with me, so we resolved to call Amtrak once more the day before, to verify again. On the day before, before we got a chance to call them, we got a call from the local train station (in B). They said that we were the only people on their list that they hadn't contacted yet, and asked if Amtrak had contacted us. We said yes and told them what we were told, and they said, "If you did that, you'll have missed the train in A by two hours." So I'd been right, and Amtrak CS had no clue. The guy from the local station got us all set up, and we caught the train in A right on time.
One of the drawbacks of the train route is that it doesn't have internet connection for long stretches of time, as it goes through mountains and desert. We bring games and other things to occupy our time, but the ride, though smooth for just relaxing, is too rough for delicate work like calligraphy practice. During one of the dead spots, while I was playing a game, I realized that I hadn't received any prep emails from the hotel like normal. So, as we were passing a small town, I used my phone to check and could not find a reservation confirmation email - I hadn't actually booked the hotel.
Panic time! No hotel, and there's no longer internet for me to book one. That was the longest ten minutes ever, waiting for the next town while despairing that I'd ever find a place to stay: there's 3500 people attending Gally, taking up most of the hotels in the area, plus another 1000-person con (a gaming convention) in the hotel that we normally stay at, and who knows what else is happening nearby. My husband, mercifully, realized that getting upset would only make things worse, so he sat patiently by, saying everything is fine and keeping me as calm as possible.
We pass by the next town and I only have a little time to hotspot in and search the hotel (on my iPad - much easier than on the phone), and bingo! They have rooms for the entire stay! But internet goes out again, so it's another ten minutes of aggravation, until we arrive at an actual stop with enough time for me to reserve the room. Whew!
The rest of the ride was fine, and we get to the hotel and check in, and it's all good. I do notice that the bathroom sink in the room has weird little black specks in it, but otherwise, everything's pretty normal. I go out to the vending machines to buy us a couple of diet cokes (omg, $4/bottle!!), and the machine gives me Dr. Pepper. I try again, yup, still Dr. Pepper. So, I have to go down to the front desk and get exchange vouchers to get what we paid for from the bistro. :P
The next morning, as we're getting ready to go to the con, we see brown water rise in the sink from the drain. Eww!! We had to call in maintenance to get them to fix that, but at least it stopped. They also cleaned the sink and the black specks didn't return. Yuck.
So, we go down to the con and check in... and they don't have us in the system. Apparently, I not only forgot to book the hotel, but also forgot to buy the tickets to the convention. Where the hell was I in 2023?? Luckily, tickets weren't sold out and we could buy them right there, but sheesh!
That evening, I go to buy us new diet cokes... and the coins get stuck in the machine. We resolve that for the rest of the trip, I shall avoid all vending machine interactions. We also decide that next year, if we go by train, we're bringing our own sodas.
The one thing that we did outside of the con was go to dinner with one of the directors from our client company on the project I work on. I have to admit I was pretty nervous about it, as I'm not usually in the position of meeting with bigwigs and doing liaison work, but he was awesome and chill. He did talk about basketball more than I would have liked, but otherwise, we had a great time, and the food was excellent (Willie Mae's - New Orleans fried chicken and catfish).
The trip back was uneventful, except that I caught a cold. I started noticing a bit of a sore throat late in the evening after the dinner with the director, but it didn't seem like much until after we'd been on the train for a while the next day. Luckily, we'd already taken off the rest of the week, but I spent the entirety of that extra time sick (and am still coughing now). I'm not sure where I caught it, since I had a mask on for the entire con; I think it's probably from a restaurant, since you can't eat with a mask on. And, of course, now my husband has it, though it's not lasting as long for him. He's expecting to be back at work tomorrow.
So that's the trip. Next, the con...
The trip itself was eventful. As in lots of things going wrong, many of them my fault. :P So here goes.
Just like last year, we chose to take a train down to LA. This is a 24-hour journey and is more expensive than traveling by air, but is far more comfortable and relaxing, since we book a sleeping car, and doesn't have you cooped up with a hundred possibly-COVID-infected passengers. With a sleeping car, all meals are included and the food on the Amtrak Coast Starlight is frankly amazing. It isn't just microwaved pre-packaged food like they have on some of the East Coast trains; they have actual chefs. Maybe next year we'll consider flying again, but I'm really enjoying the train trip.
About three weeks before the trip, Amtrak sent me an email saying that the train station in my town (call it B) wasn't going to be available due to work on the tracks, so we would need to catch it in town A by going to the station in B and they would shuttle us to A. The email said to call CS to verify, so we did, and after checking, the CS agent said yes, arrive at B's station at the usual time and we'd be shuttled up to A. This didn't make sense to me, because A is before B on the route - this plan should get us to A two hours after the train leaves it. However, the lady checked again and said yes, the plan she gave was correct.
This didn't sit well with me, so we resolved to call Amtrak once more the day before, to verify again. On the day before, before we got a chance to call them, we got a call from the local train station (in B). They said that we were the only people on their list that they hadn't contacted yet, and asked if Amtrak had contacted us. We said yes and told them what we were told, and they said, "If you did that, you'll have missed the train in A by two hours." So I'd been right, and Amtrak CS had no clue. The guy from the local station got us all set up, and we caught the train in A right on time.
One of the drawbacks of the train route is that it doesn't have internet connection for long stretches of time, as it goes through mountains and desert. We bring games and other things to occupy our time, but the ride, though smooth for just relaxing, is too rough for delicate work like calligraphy practice. During one of the dead spots, while I was playing a game, I realized that I hadn't received any prep emails from the hotel like normal. So, as we were passing a small town, I used my phone to check and could not find a reservation confirmation email - I hadn't actually booked the hotel.
Panic time! No hotel, and there's no longer internet for me to book one. That was the longest ten minutes ever, waiting for the next town while despairing that I'd ever find a place to stay: there's 3500 people attending Gally, taking up most of the hotels in the area, plus another 1000-person con (a gaming convention) in the hotel that we normally stay at, and who knows what else is happening nearby. My husband, mercifully, realized that getting upset would only make things worse, so he sat patiently by, saying everything is fine and keeping me as calm as possible.
We pass by the next town and I only have a little time to hotspot in and search the hotel (on my iPad - much easier than on the phone), and bingo! They have rooms for the entire stay! But internet goes out again, so it's another ten minutes of aggravation, until we arrive at an actual stop with enough time for me to reserve the room. Whew!
The rest of the ride was fine, and we get to the hotel and check in, and it's all good. I do notice that the bathroom sink in the room has weird little black specks in it, but otherwise, everything's pretty normal. I go out to the vending machines to buy us a couple of diet cokes (omg, $4/bottle!!), and the machine gives me Dr. Pepper. I try again, yup, still Dr. Pepper. So, I have to go down to the front desk and get exchange vouchers to get what we paid for from the bistro. :P
The next morning, as we're getting ready to go to the con, we see brown water rise in the sink from the drain. Eww!! We had to call in maintenance to get them to fix that, but at least it stopped. They also cleaned the sink and the black specks didn't return. Yuck.
So, we go down to the con and check in... and they don't have us in the system. Apparently, I not only forgot to book the hotel, but also forgot to buy the tickets to the convention. Where the hell was I in 2023?? Luckily, tickets weren't sold out and we could buy them right there, but sheesh!
That evening, I go to buy us new diet cokes... and the coins get stuck in the machine. We resolve that for the rest of the trip, I shall avoid all vending machine interactions. We also decide that next year, if we go by train, we're bringing our own sodas.
The one thing that we did outside of the con was go to dinner with one of the directors from our client company on the project I work on. I have to admit I was pretty nervous about it, as I'm not usually in the position of meeting with bigwigs and doing liaison work, but he was awesome and chill. He did talk about basketball more than I would have liked, but otherwise, we had a great time, and the food was excellent (Willie Mae's - New Orleans fried chicken and catfish).
The trip back was uneventful, except that I caught a cold. I started noticing a bit of a sore throat late in the evening after the dinner with the director, but it didn't seem like much until after we'd been on the train for a while the next day. Luckily, we'd already taken off the rest of the week, but I spent the entirety of that extra time sick (and am still coughing now). I'm not sure where I caught it, since I had a mask on for the entire con; I think it's probably from a restaurant, since you can't eat with a mask on. And, of course, now my husband has it, though it's not lasting as long for him. He's expecting to be back at work tomorrow.
So that's the trip. Next, the con...
no subject
Date: 2024-03-02 05:50 am (UTC)I do prefer trains to flying. I've taken a number a trains trips in my life - most as kid, and it's so much better than other ways of traveling.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-04 05:53 pm (UTC)I've been really enjoying the train travel. I definitely prefer flying simply for flying (my dad was a pilot and aircraft mechanic and my brother was an air traffic controller, so it's in my genes) but trains are more fun and relaxing.