Travel Troubles

Personal

By the way, I’ve never been happier to be home. It’s the little things — like using a mouse and a real keyboard. Unfortunately getting here took the better part of 19 hours. They actually had the hood up on the plane that was supposed to fly me overseas, which was a long delay. I overheard someone say “if they get out the duct tape I’m staying here.” The connecting flight in DC was very missed, but after 45 minutes in line I got the last seat on a direct flight to SFO leaving in about two hours. Then I spent more than two hours in line trying to get a boarding pass and through security, the height being my ticket was once again tagged SSSS which mean I got the “special” treatment at security with my flight set to take off in 8 minutes. (I swear I’m on some sort of list.)

The very worst was I had bought some matchbooks for my sister (who collects them) and they were in my suitcase. The guy asked how many there were and I said “two” because that’s how many I bought at souvenir places. He found another (a free one from a hotel) and another TSA guy came up and said “which two of these do you want?” and took the third one away from me. I was shocked, and said “Are you going to keep that?” and he replied “Well you’re not getting it back.” I stumbled away to the shuttle and ran to the gate, 10 minutes after it was supposed to leave and all the doors were closed but luckily the plane hadn’t left yet. I finally got in around 1 AM and it was too late for BART so I just took a cab. Now I’m home and warm and dry and clean and being back after travelling so intensely makes it seem that much better. Time to disappear under some sheets…

A Summary

Asides

I guess the problem with a long piece is many just skim it, and the more words there are the more chance there is for the meaning to be lost. I’ve given a lot of thought to putting things as succintly as possible: Knowing what I knew then, I would probably make the same decision; knowing what I know now I wouldn’t even consider it. Not thinking through all the ramifications was a big mistake. So was not having more community dialog from the beginning, which would have caught this earlier. I am extremely sorry for both, and it won’t happen again. Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive. Amazingly, WordPress has gotten more donations in the last 4 days then it has in the past year — what an incredible community.

Meeting Ben

Asides

While in Florence I had the pleasure of meeting Ben Hammersley who took us to have real Tuscan food, which apparently involves parts of a cow you wouldn’t normally expect to eat. We chatted about a whole range of topics and I learned quite a bit about everything from solo polar expeditions to DNA hacking.

Back Online

WordPress

I called my sister last night to tell her about a present I found for her in the market and she interrupted me to say she saw my name show up in Google News a few times and started reading some of the articles. Before the phone card ran out she read me some headlines and my stomach sank. This is my first vacation and I almost didn’t even bring my laptop. (Luckily I talked myself into bringing it to do pictures.) I haven’t been on the internet since Monday and I obviously have a lot to catch up on. It was almost midnight when I found out and there was no access anywhere, so I woke up at 4:30 AM this morning to catch the first water bus to the airport and found some overpriced wifi, and here I am.

I have close to a thousand emails and countless blog posts and comments to go through, but I’ll try to synthesize everything and respond ASAP, I think it’s important because some people seem to be spinning things quite maliciously. If you have a specific question please send me an email and I’ll do my best to respond personally or on the blog, even if you’ve already decided I’m the scum of the earth.