July 11th: going to San Francisco!

The next day I had to sort my stuff out because I was going to catch a plane to San Francisco. I had a bit of a headache at the end because I somehow picked up an extra kilogram in my luggage somewhere and I was struggling to get rid of it. I didn't really want to throw out the shampoo and conditioner I had, because I've found it very puzzling to find places in cities which sell those things.

It was a bit of a rush in the end. I think the plane was going to leave at 11am or something like that. I felt bad because I thought it was Jill's birthday this day and that I'd made her have to take someone to the airport on her birthday! But actually I think it wasn't... I was dealing with a few weeks worth of less sleep than I would have liked, and I know someone has a birthday on this day so I guessed it was Jill's...

We got to the airport alright. I said goodbye. It was cool staying with them.

I took my stuff to the check-in desk. Since my luggage was overweight, I had a feeling that the lady would tell me that my luggage was overweight. The lady told me that my luggage was overweight. I unzipped the front and threw my shampoo and conditioner into the bin. It was weighed again and I noticed it was a few hundred grams (or fractions of strange American units of weight) overweight. But she was nice and let it go through. However she said that I had to pay something like $15! She said it wasn't for the luggage or anything. It was some kind of amount that just has to be paid. I was a bit confused, but you can't really do anything about it at that point in time.

I made it in, and I got on my plane at some point.

The plane has two seats, then the aisle, then one seat. The smallest passenger plane I've been on so far! I'm getting a nice variety of planes.

That's Memphis down there I think. I could see the pyramids!

We had complimentary refreshments on this plane. The lady serving was really nice. She saw that I finished my glass of orange juice very quickly, so she offered me another one! By that point I'd noticed from the other passengers that while my orange juice was filled straight into the cup, meaning that I got exactly one cup worth, if you ask for coke you are given the whole can which fills something like 2.5 cups. So I asked for coke when she offered me a second one. I was very thirsty so I greatly appreciated this. The passenger who had the coke the first time looked at me a bit jealously, since he was still going with his coke and therefore wasn't offered a second refreshment. I got a good deal here.

At Dallas airport. Texas.

A monorail connects the different terminals together. This seems to be fairly common at airports in the US. I think you can also walk the distance if you want. But sometimes the distances can be quite long.

I got to the terminal and then I think I had a scheduled 3 hour wait until I'd get onto the second plane to take me to San Francisco. I got a sandwich from Subway. I have discovered that even if the food at airports is expensive, you can't go the whole day without eating something decent. I think Subway is an okay choice at airports.

I hung around for a while. I was really missing my mp3 player. I left it at the hostel in Washington DC. At times like these, where I have to wait in a fairly boring place, some music would be really good. I considered buying an mp3 player from somewhere. They have vending machines here which sell electronic items like that. You can pay with your bank card. I decided not to since I prefer to investigate the specifications for a few weeks before buying electronic stuff.

It turned out that the plane was delayed. Then it kept getting further delayed. I think it was 3 hours delayed in the end. This was kind of worrying for me, since originally I was going to arrive into San Francisco at something like 7 or 8pm, so there wasn't much room for further delay before it would start to become a serious point of night time when I would arrive. However, this type of thing seems to happen fairly often, so I was getting better at not being too bothered.

Eventually we got up into the air.

I can't remember much of this flight. At one point I looked out to my left and noticed a big stretch of lights from suburbs. It was a fairly major city. I was trying to figure out if maybe it was Los Angeles. However I don't think it would make sense for us to fly over that city, and I thought we would probably be fairly far to the north east of there. But I'm also not sure how far the line of sight would go, given our height. Maybe it was Los Angeles.

We came down toward San Francisco. It was quite dark at that point. It was fairly cloudy, too.

We did a whole lot of maneuvers which let me see different highways of carlights and bridges. I was trying to orient my position. Then we started to descend. Descending went on for a fair while. I was in the zone where I hold onto my seat and hope we don't end up in a fiery crash site. Then the engines increased power significantly. The really loud increase in volume of the engine was a bit disconcerting because surely we were moments away from landing. I was trying to justify it. I thought maybe we had undershot the runway quite badly and needed more power to avoid hitting into something. Then I looked around the inside of the plane and realised that we were pointing upwards. We were no longer descending. I exchanged some confused looks with the people near me. The pilot came through the speakers and told us that he had taken it upon himself to abort the landing. He had received too many confused messages from the flight control at the airport and he didn't feel safe with the situation! He said that this time of day was a particularly busy time for San Francisco airport, so things were really crazy in the air at that time.

We were up again at a hovering altitude. We maneuvered around a bit more and then went in for the second landing attempt. This time we made it down. But then we were told that there was currently no gate for the plane to pull into! We had to wait for some other plane to exit out of its gate before we could have somewhere. It took about 10 minutes and then we got in.

I made my way through the airport and found my suitcase. Jill had told me there is a train from the airport into the city. I had some maps about which stop I should get off at to get to the hostel.

I was slightly outside to get the train. It was misty and a bit chilly! This was a big change compared to the past few weeks. The past few weeks had been all hot and humid!

I took the train into the city. It went underground at some point. I got off and stumbled a few blocks over to the hostel. It is pretty much right in the centre of China town. I was hoping they would still be open. I think it was about 11:30pm or maybe even later than midnight. Thankfully they had stayed awake waiting for me...

I dragged my 20kg suitcase and 12kg backpack up 4 flights of stairs, got checked in, then found a bed and slept.