Planes, Trains and Oh Wait, Just Planes

The totally brilliant thing about traveling with a laptop is that I can write out my future blog posts in transit. Well, on the airplane at the very least. In the past, I took notes on my iPod of what I was doing during the day or jotted things down in a notebook, but being able to express my feelings at 60 wph (I assume that I type at least that fast – I was the fastest typer in my fifth grade class at 34 words per minute and I’d like to believe that I’ve improved in the past 12 years) during a five-hour flight without a movie or any other form of entertainment is pretty great.

The first flight of the day departed at 5:30 am and brought me to Philly. As previously documented, one of my greatest fears is airplanes (strangely enough, ebola is another one of my greatest fears, but that predates the current epidemic by about eight years) and do you know what is better than putting me 40,000 feet in the air? Putting in an exit row! “Are you ok with being in an exit row, ma’am?” Well, considering the fact that there is nowhere else to go, then yes, I guess I am.

I was supposed to be in seat 11B, meaning the middle seat. I was almost ok with this because being in the middle seat meant that there would be at least one person between me and this civic duty. So, I’m sitting in my seat, about to partake some serious masochism by actually looking at the safety packet (because let’s face it, even when I’m petrified, I’m an overachiever) when a tiny Korean couple comes up the aisle and I can just tell – I’m destined to be the deli meat in their airplane sandwich. This would be the point where I truly doubted my sanity as I immediately offered to let them sit next to each other, putting me up close and personal with the emergency exit. Given the obvious lack of any breaking news reports, I think anyone reading this can tell that my plane made it and I was not required to jump through an airplane window or save any lives today, but still.

I spent a good portion of the flight wondering why people give toddlers iPads. While waiting to board, I saw a kid that couldn’t be older than three totally engrossed in one while he was trying to walk with him mom. The child almost got left behind! Does this actually make sense to anyone? On the plane, I sat behind a woman and her son and immediately after sitting down, the mom asked him if he wanted “his iPad.” This was a child who wasn’t even old enough to buckle his own seatbelt, but apparently he has his very own iPad. I DON’T EVEN HAVE AN IPAD! What exactly are these babies doing with all of this technology? It’s not like they’re on Twitter because they haven’t even learned the basic 26 characters in our alphabet, much less how to make a succinct, grammatically correct, witty post in 140 characters or less. One time, Whitney and I spent the majority of a 5 hour flight playing with pillows. Just regular pillows! And we were WAY older than these kids… Hell, even on our flight to Europe, Whitney’s turtle pillow pet occupied a good half hour of our time.

After landing in Philly, I had to find my way to my next flight. Mid-flight to Philly, I realized that I didn’t have any headphones with me, so I bought some in case there was a movie on the plane (there wasn’t, so now I have some spiffy pink headphones and absolutely nothing to do with them). I was also on a hunt for the latest Vanity Fair which has Jennifer Lawrence on the cover, but nope, my hunt was in vain. I got a little bit lost which doesn’t make any sense because all I needed to do was walk in a straight line and then I had a pretzel for breakfast. Go ahead and judge me, I don’t care! Pretzels are delicious.

I really believe that traveling brings out the worst in many people. Case and point: Despite the questionable hygiene of these things, I think that lying down on one’s tray table is one of the more comfortable ways to sleep on a plane. Unless you’re sitting behind a jerk like the guy in front of me who really wanted to recline in his chair. I will admit that my preferred sleeping position might impede a fellow traveler from partaking in this luxury but how many times are you going to wake me up by slamming your back into your chair? I’m sure we could come up with a compromise that would include a traumatic brain injury! In case you think I’m being hypersensitive/paranoid (which are most traits that I most certainly possess in spades), I caught this guy looking at me as clearly as I caught the guy who was “just trying to read my shirt” earlier in the day. I truly hope that these guys have great moms because I can’t see how they’ll ever get another woman to love them when they act like this. 

It's Almost Here!

I have been awake since 3 am. Roughly 19 hours.

Given our bizarre travel schedule, I had to get up to drive my dad to the airport. I shall be following in his footsteps and leaving the house in 5-6 hours. My dad took a suitcase for both of us, so most of my luggage is already on the west coast, but have I finished packing my carry on? Absolutely not.

On a separate note, this is the first time I will be bringing my laptop with me to blog -- I used an iPod in South Africa and Whitney's laptop in Europe. My laptop is named Chip and he is very excited to be going on vacation with me.

I am bad at packing. I am good at binge-watching The Mindy Project. I should be able to do these things at the same time, but I am also bad at multitasking.

Things I should be doing: packing
Things I am not doing: packing

To be fair, there are more items on both lists, but few of them are quite as time sensitive, because my luggage leaves with Chuck on Saturday at 3 in the morning. I have two days to get my act together... this might be a national disaster.

Let's not even think about the natural disasters, because thanks to the Smart Traveler's Enrollment Program, I was notified of the Category 3 Hurricane in Tijuana over the weekend. The ten day forecast is looking good now, but still! Not exactly what someone is looking to get away from the depressing grey of constant rain wants to hear. Fingers crossed for warm!!!

We just went ahead with our currency conversion! I'm not going to lie -- ordering pesos is a lot more satisfying than ordering euros. Pesos make you feel rich while euros just remind you about the sad state of our economy.

One Month From Today

So, if you read my previous post about our travel plans, you will know that I leave exactly one month from today. This is very exciting for obvious reasons and I just went to the public library and took out a book on Mexico because I am the designated travel guide.

I think it is a little funny that responsibility of research/planning has now fallen to me since until yesterday, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to go. Now that my presence has been verified, however, my father and sister seem willing to take advantage of it.

Since we are not going to a major city, this is going to be a bit like planning the visit to Capri over the summer -- I'll have to do more digging to find out what we want to do. I'd like to state for the record, however, that no matter how much I read, I will not be able to identify and give background information on each and every building we pass despite what my sister thinks.

Side bar: Feeling a little un-American because I was out of the country on the 4th of July and now I'll be missing Columbus Day as well. Although I personally believe that Columbus Day should actually  be called Mass-Murdering, Miscalculating, Dumbass Explorer Day, who doesn't like a three day weekend? America was built on three day weekends.

Rosarito Beach

And the winner of the mysterious, mystical October vacation is Mexico!! Rosarito Beach, obviously, given the title of this post. October 12-18th.

Getting there and back is going to be a tidbit insane, and by a tidbit, I mean, I don't think three related people heading to the same destination have ever had more ridiculous travel plans. First off, we are all flying into San Diego then crossing the border, but that is totally normal compared to the rest of our plans.

• My dad is leaving Boston at 5:30am on October 11th. I'm not going with him. I'm leaving Boston at 5:30am on October 12th. 
• I get to have a nice layover in Philly and should arrive in CA at exactly 10:16am local time. 
• Whitney is leaving from Charlotte, NC on October 12th as well, flying to Houston and she should finally arrive in San Diego at 10:27am local time. 
• And then we have to come home -- once again, you would assume that since my dad and I are both coming back to Boston that we'd fly together this time. Your assumption is wrong, since my dad is leaving on October 17th and I'll be leaving on the 18th.
• Whitney is also leaving on the 18th, but she'll be flying back to school obviously. All of this seems fine and dandy, except that my direct flight home leaves at 9:15 am and hers doesn't leave until 1:11pm. Although slightly inconvenient, I do not believe this will be an issue for Whitney, who will simply search the airport for a Pinkberry -- she even has written a song for such occasions (it goes like this: "I really, really, really want Pinkberry." She's such a songbird! I don't know how she does it).

Also, yes, you read that correctly, I have a direct flight back to Boston, which makes me the defacto winner of these shenanigans, except for the fact that I still hate planes.

So, now I need to go figure out what one does at Rosarito Beach. I have a feeling that it is simply sit in the sun (or for me it might be sit in the sun, then go to hotel room so you can blog about sitting in the sun) and I think I am qualified to do that.