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Flying home
Jan. 30th, 2026 11:00 pmOur flights were scheduled at very compatible times, so we headed out at 9:40 or so, leaving the key in the lockbox since the woman who was supposed to meet us at checkout was running late. I abandoned my snorkel and fins to future visitors, because I am never fucking going to snorkel again, and I’m never going to be in tropical waters again, and I’m definitely never going to scuba again. It is REALLY nice to be able to recognize that entire leisure activity is one I can say, been there, tried it a few times, definitely do not enjoy as a lifestyle and will never repeat. I’ll go to beaches when there are clouds and there are a couple people bundled up and walking in the distance and getting wet is a health hazard. I told R. about one I used to go to when I was a teen:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g58740-d563134-Reviews-Richmond_Beach_Saltwater_Park-Shoreline_Washington.html
That’s more my type of beach. Supposedly Newfoundland has those kinds of beaches. I will be investigating and will report back.
My flight, alas, had equipment problems, and left four hours late, no internet, no map info on the flight. Ugh. I listened to more of Sue Prideaux’ Wild Thing, dozed off, turned it off, and listened to music instead.
I had a 6” veggie sub at a Subway for lunch. Tablemates turned out to include a man who worked for DEC back in the day in Reading UK. Fun convo! He went to Insignia which got bought by Citrix but Citrix packaged him out instead. Lots of emulator work, a really fun story about an IBM project to have non x86 hardware that ran Windows and so forth in emulation, and sold as generic, but if you paid more you could run other stuff on the native. Gates wanted too much for the license so it never launched. If it HAD launched, the future of Intel would have been very different — it’s pretty clear that this guy had no idea that was the real reason for killing that project. This was all in the AIM universe which I’d forgotten about, but you can poke around starting here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance
I had a single without cheese at a Wendy’s for an early dinner. It was barely above 0 F when I got home, and got through pass control wicked fast (prefilled out the mobile form, might have helped). I waited for R. but airport staff didn’t tell anyone we all had to go to passenger zone 4 for pickup, they were just preventing pickups at 3. *sigh* That’s a lot of cold to stand in for 15 minutes while it gets figured out. I was layered up, but I would have needed much better gloves and wool socks (I was still in sandals, with socks, but thin cotton ones) for that to be tolerable.
I’ve been thinking a little about the kind of travel I want to do going forward. I really like the con weekends, and there are aspects of traveling with I. that are really fun. I think I want to focus on trips with her that are in cities, are exclusively public transportation (so no one is ever dependent on anyone else for getting around) and while I have zero issue at all sharing a multi-room unit with her (it’s actually really fun), I want to really hard enforce the understanding that I’m going to eat breakfast in and I’m probably going to each a bunch of lunches in OR I’m going to pre-pick the lunch locations (happy to negotiate) to ensure I’m not eating at places that don’t have good options for me on the menu / the allergy standard of service is absent / there is no ingredients list etc. It’s really clear to me that that is why the Disney Florida trips work so well (no public transportation, but resort transportation is a substitute). My biggest problem traveling with people is that they want to do a bunch of shit on vacation, and generally speaking I would rather not.
Also! New policy. I’m going to tell people I’m discussing possible travel plans with that spontaneous restaurant selection in an unfamiliar place, unless it’s a franchise with a stable menu, risks wiping out one or more vacation days for me and is potentially life threatening. And then I’m going to ask them to describe their thoughts and feelings in response to that, and wait while they do. If they can’t come up with any thing to say, I’m not going to discuss travel with them any more. If they can, and they say something like, aha! Good to know! You plan your meals, and let me know if you need my pre-commitment for reservation size on any of them, and I’ll take care of my own. Well, then we can proceed with caution. If they say something like, aha! Good to know! You plan your meals, and I will participate in X or all the dinners or whatever, we can proceed merrily. If they say, oh, it’ll be fine, or you can bring snacks, or I’m sure it will work out, or anything like that, that is hard core, red flag we are never traveling together (again) and I’m going to rethink you as a friend and pay close attention to everything else you do from now on because that is invalidating.
And if they say, “I think we’re planning this in too much detail” or “We probably went overboard on getting all these reservations” or whatever, then I’m going to tell them stories of life with R. and see what happens. I’m still married, and I still like traveling with R. Some people are trainable, and just say stupid shit along the way. I would know. I’m one of them.
Also, apparently the woman forgot to add some fees to the insurance payment (I was surprised it had gone down ever so slightly, but no, it had not). I’ll have to do that when I get home.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g58740-d563134-Reviews-Richmond_Beach_Saltwater_Park-Shoreline_Washington.html
That’s more my type of beach. Supposedly Newfoundland has those kinds of beaches. I will be investigating and will report back.
My flight, alas, had equipment problems, and left four hours late, no internet, no map info on the flight. Ugh. I listened to more of Sue Prideaux’ Wild Thing, dozed off, turned it off, and listened to music instead.
I had a 6” veggie sub at a Subway for lunch. Tablemates turned out to include a man who worked for DEC back in the day in Reading UK. Fun convo! He went to Insignia which got bought by Citrix but Citrix packaged him out instead. Lots of emulator work, a really fun story about an IBM project to have non x86 hardware that ran Windows and so forth in emulation, and sold as generic, but if you paid more you could run other stuff on the native. Gates wanted too much for the license so it never launched. If it HAD launched, the future of Intel would have been very different — it’s pretty clear that this guy had no idea that was the real reason for killing that project. This was all in the AIM universe which I’d forgotten about, but you can poke around starting here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance
I had a single without cheese at a Wendy’s for an early dinner. It was barely above 0 F when I got home, and got through pass control wicked fast (prefilled out the mobile form, might have helped). I waited for R. but airport staff didn’t tell anyone we all had to go to passenger zone 4 for pickup, they were just preventing pickups at 3. *sigh* That’s a lot of cold to stand in for 15 minutes while it gets figured out. I was layered up, but I would have needed much better gloves and wool socks (I was still in sandals, with socks, but thin cotton ones) for that to be tolerable.
I’ve been thinking a little about the kind of travel I want to do going forward. I really like the con weekends, and there are aspects of traveling with I. that are really fun. I think I want to focus on trips with her that are in cities, are exclusively public transportation (so no one is ever dependent on anyone else for getting around) and while I have zero issue at all sharing a multi-room unit with her (it’s actually really fun), I want to really hard enforce the understanding that I’m going to eat breakfast in and I’m probably going to each a bunch of lunches in OR I’m going to pre-pick the lunch locations (happy to negotiate) to ensure I’m not eating at places that don’t have good options for me on the menu / the allergy standard of service is absent / there is no ingredients list etc. It’s really clear to me that that is why the Disney Florida trips work so well (no public transportation, but resort transportation is a substitute). My biggest problem traveling with people is that they want to do a bunch of shit on vacation, and generally speaking I would rather not.
Also! New policy. I’m going to tell people I’m discussing possible travel plans with that spontaneous restaurant selection in an unfamiliar place, unless it’s a franchise with a stable menu, risks wiping out one or more vacation days for me and is potentially life threatening. And then I’m going to ask them to describe their thoughts and feelings in response to that, and wait while they do. If they can’t come up with any thing to say, I’m not going to discuss travel with them any more. If they can, and they say something like, aha! Good to know! You plan your meals, and let me know if you need my pre-commitment for reservation size on any of them, and I’ll take care of my own. Well, then we can proceed with caution. If they say something like, aha! Good to know! You plan your meals, and I will participate in X or all the dinners or whatever, we can proceed merrily. If they say, oh, it’ll be fine, or you can bring snacks, or I’m sure it will work out, or anything like that, that is hard core, red flag we are never traveling together (again) and I’m going to rethink you as a friend and pay close attention to everything else you do from now on because that is invalidating.
And if they say, “I think we’re planning this in too much detail” or “We probably went overboard on getting all these reservations” or whatever, then I’m going to tell them stories of life with R. and see what happens. I’m still married, and I still like traveling with R. Some people are trainable, and just say stupid shit along the way. I would know. I’m one of them.
Also, apparently the woman forgot to add some fees to the insurance payment (I was surprised it had gone down ever so slightly, but no, it had not). I’ll have to do that when I get home.