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| Muir Woods National Monument Sign |
Saturday, April 30, 2016
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| Zoho Bikes |
Today was an early one as I woke up at 3:45am after going to sleep at 10:30pm. I had everything packed up and keys turned in by 4:15am and was ready for my journey to the airport in Oakland, CA. As I left the hotel, the hotel clerk gave me a bag of gold fish crackers with a reminder to complete a satisfaction survey. The drive to the airport was not bad, but I was surprised that there were still a lot of cars still on the freeway at 4:30am. It reminded me of a Friday night in Jackson or Birmingham. The rental car return and shuttle ride to the airport went great and quick but the line to check-in and drop off my bag took almost 20 minutes and standing in line at the security checkpoint faired no better with a 25 minutes wait. Apparently, the airport was under construction and the lines were condensed. I actually thought that I was going to miss my flight due to the long lines. Well, airlines can take their time when they want so this was one of those days. This was the first of three flights of the day anyway, but I just wanted to get back home. I got to Los Angeles at about 7:45am and ate breakfast at a place called Osteria and had some steak, potatoes, and toasts. Next, I boarded the plane from Los Angeles to Atlanta for a good 4 hours. I watched only one movie this time and it was The Big Short starring Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, and Ryan Gosling. The movie was about how a few groups of Wall Street brokers figured out that the housing business was crooked and their bubble was about to burst because people got too arrogant and greedy. People started to bet against the housing market for the first time and financial institutions thought that they were crazy and sold them several bonds thinking that they could make easy money as a result of their naive approach. This eventually led to the housing crash of 2007 and 2008, and the American people eventually bailed those crooks out. An interesting note about watching movies on an airline is that if the airplane does not have a touch screen on the back of the seat, but has in flight wifi, then the passenger can log onto the wifi network and download the go go in flight app and watch the movies, tv shows, HBO, Showtime, Dish Network, listen to music, and play video games offered by the airline. Aside from this, the only interesting thing that happened on the plane rides was that we hit some rough patches of air and that was not fun going to the bathroom during the shacking and bouncing of the plane. You knew that I was going to work in a bathroom reference. LOL
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| Zoho Fun Area |
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| Deer at UC Berkeley |
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| A Bay Side View |
I ate at Carrabba's Italian Grill in Atlanta, and it was not that spectacular. The Olive Garden is better in my opinion. My last flight was delayed by 40 minutes because they had to do seat maintenance before take off and we were the last flight of the day as well. I really wanted to know what the actual problem was with the seats. It was about 8:30pm when I landed in Columbus, MS and met Keela and the kids in the van talking and playing with them until my bag came through on the conveyor belt. We rode home and it was a little rough for Jack and Livy to get to sleep but finally did, so me and Keela watched television and I wrote my blog for Friday. This is a bitter sweet because this wraps up my trip and as I reflect on my conference and California experience, I got to do the following:
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| Shower Dispensers |
Surfs Up, Dude!
