The trip home was a pain, but relatively uneventful. I slept until about 10:40, then started packing in a big rush to get checked out by noon. The hotel's bell desk was just horribly overwhelmed, so I ended up hauling my bags downstairs myself, and then got one of the nastiest cabbies I've ever had on the ride to the airport; he refused to lift bags into the car (just stood there glaring at me while I hoisted them into the trunk), bitched about the delegates and the convention all the way to the airport, snapped at me for not speaking loud enough when I responded to him, and then tried to refuse the delegate taxi voucher for the airport trip, because "they wouldn't reimburse him enough money." You know, usually I feel a lot of sympathy for cabbies, because my father, uncle, and one brother were all cabbies for a long time, but that fellow has no one but himself to blame if tips are crappy.
The flight out of Logan was delayed an hour and a half - all flights were grounded. They never did tell us why. But the captain got permission to go like a bat out of hell, so we somehow made it to Dulles only about 10 minutes late. Then our gate was occupied, so we couldn't deplane for another 15 minutes, while I was jittering like a mad thing about the 20 minutes I had to find the next gate and board my flight to Seattle. I ran full-tilt-boogie through the terminal, and managed to get into the end of the line for my flight. *whew!* At least I'd been lucky enough to have the only unoccupied seat on the entire plane next to me, so I was able to stretch out enough to doze for a bit on the plane.
Then the flight out of Dulles was backed up onto the tarmac for another hour and a half (!!!). Gah. There were small kids, apparently without parents, in the seats in front of me just going berserk with boredom and discomfort. The fellow next to me, a big swarthy fellow with a strong accent, was obviously also very uncomfortable (and the poor fellow had the middle seat of a completely full plane), so I tried to give him as much room as I could. When we finally got airborne and they brought us food and something to drink, he wolfed his food and gulped his water so fast it was obvious he was starving. I offered him my cookies; at first, he seemed very disbelieving that I was giving them to him, but then he took them very gratefully and asked very bashfully if he could possibly have just a tiny bit of my soft drink, as he was very thirsty. I gave him a drink, and then, later in the flight, tapped him on the arm to let him know they were bringing water by. He was extremely grateful. When we got near the end of the flight, I found out why he was so uncomfortable and so hungry; he'd flown from Bombay to Paris to Washington D.C., without a stopover and was heading for Seattle to join a cruise ship as a chef. What a horrible itinerary. I can't complain any more about my trip being tiring! Poor guy, no wonder he was miserable.
When we were landing, he very apologetically asked if I could help him understand the instructions he'd gotten from the cruise line about how to get to the hotel and then to the ship. I basically told him to just follow me to baggage claim, and then I'd help him find the proper place to call and board the hotel's shuttle. I pointed out some of the scenery - Mt. Rainier, Puget Sound, etc., as we flew over various scenic spots. He remarked on how warm American people seemed to be, and said he'd seen films of people bringing friends flowers at the airport. As we deplaned, I was looking around hopefully for John, and not seeing him, told my Indian friend that I'd need to leave him alone for a bit to try to call my husband. He seemed very insecure at being left alone; I don't blame him! I called John, but got his voicemail, so now I was getting rather concerned. Thankfully, I spotted him on the way back to baggage claim. He had a bouquet of white carnations (my favorite) for me, so I was indeed carrying flowers when we rejoined my new Indian friend. We all got our bags without a problem, and John and I helped him find his hotel shuttle and then parted with his profuse thanks. John had washed my car for me while I was gone. Is that a sweetheart, or what?
Met William Rivers Pitt and Jim Hightower at the Seattle Rolling Thunder Saturday. We were volunteering, but we finally had to just bail on it, because I was so out of it. So was poor Will Pitt!
The Regime Change barbecue was at 2:00 Sunday, so I didn't get to relax as I'd hoped. It was a good party, though. I promised Tyler I'd bring all kinds of swag to the next district meeting on Wednesday. Found out that Steve and Sharon Allen, who I've been seeing at all the district stuff, are the parents of Steve Allen, who was my best friend at Seattle Public Library when I worked there! Talk about a small world! I can't believe I never made the connection - I've been to their house and I've met Sharon, for heaven's sake. I was really tickled by that, as I was sorry to lose touch with Steve.
Dave Ross attended the barbecue, gave a brief speech, and was doing some meeting and greeting. I'm really impressed by the attention he pays to what people say to him. If he keeps that up, he'll make a fine Congressman. Geoff Simpson and Pat Sullivan were supposed to attend, but they hadn't made it by the time we left at 5:30, which is too bad. I'd like to have thanked Geoff for the contribution to my fundraiser. Oh well, I'll be marching with them on Saturday in the Good Old Days parade in Auburn. There was a lot of interest in convention stories from Ricardo and me; we promised to speak at the next Kerry meetup for the 47th District.
Noemi's website has a wrapup about the barbecue: http://www.mindspring.com/~redefeatbush/kerrywins.htm
Went for a brief ego-surf this morning, and I got my picture in another paper:
I like that one well enough that I'll pay the money and send for a reprint of it.
Plus, I knew sitting next to Gregg Gallo in his rainbow stovepipe hat would get me in some more pictures:
I also made quite a few of the official photographs, which I'll probably bite the bullet and spend the money to order. They'll make a nice scrapbook to remember this experience by.
Several of them can be seen here: http://www.seattleceltic.net/photo3.html
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