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Mardel->Retiro->San Isidro->Ezeiza->Dallas->San Francisco

I am at a Canon­i­cal thing in San Ma­teo (right next to San Fran­cis­co). Ar­rived yes­ter­day, and have my last free day to­day, so I need to get some sight­see­ing done.

For starter­s, here's the trip gallery, not very full yet but go­ing to post the as I get them.

But the trip...

I was in Mar del Pla­ta vis­it­ing fam­i­ly on thurs­day, and had tick­ets for Buenos Aires at mid­night. At 9 PM... long dis­tance driv­ers strike. All bus­es sus­pend­ed. Ran to the train sta­tion to see if there was a chance of get­ting one: no tick­ets for a week. Se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing a 500KM taxi ride.

At 11P­M... strike sus­pend­ed! So, get the fam­i­ly, get the bags, get on the bus... no, sor­ry, you can't get on the bus be­cause you are an id­iot and you bought them for the wrong day. Re­al­ly, I bought tick­ets for thurs­day 00:05 not fri­day 00:05.

In a busy va­ca­tion town, at mid­night, with­out tick­et­s... ok, so we bought new tick­ets for 15 min­utes lat­er. If it's a prob­lem you can fix with a giv­en amount of oney, at least that puts a cer­tain val­ue on how uch of a mo­ron yours tru­ly is. I am about 120 dol­lars worth of mo­ron.

So, new tick­et­s. but they are not (of course) tick­ets to where I live, they are tick­ets for BUenos Aires Re­tiro bus sta­tion, which is about 25KM away from home.

So, at 00:30 we get on the bus, at 5:45 we are at re­tiro, at 6:00 we are on a car, at 6:45 we are at home. At 7:00 I am asleep. At 9:00 I am awake and ready for work!

I work in­ter­mit­tent­ly while pack­ing bags and such, at 5:30PM am on a car to Ezeiza (35km ride). When we are en­ter­ing the air­port, smoke starts com­ing out of the AC (did I men­tion that the AC was bro­ken and it's rough­ly 1.5 hours in bad traf­fic in 30C, un­der the sun, to get to the air­port? I should have!).

So, ap­par­ent­ly the car is on fire, but just a lit­tle bit, the smoke goes away, I get off the car, meet Lu­cio, we do our check­in, I have a cup of cof­fee, at 10:00 PM I am on the plane.

But we have to wait 30 min­utes in the run­way be­cause of traf­fic. Al­so, the cap­tain men­tions that this is the plane's last flight be­cause it's too old and is be­ing sold for scrap. So we are fly­ing in scrap. Al­so, half the screens don't work, it has a whoop­ing 6 movies you can watch, and ... they have spe­cif­ic start­ing times. Yes, you say "hey, I feel like atch­ing Tak­en 2!" and you are pre­sent­ed with a nice sign giv­ing you the op­tion of "want to start watch­ing it even though it start­ed 45 min­utes ago, or would you rather wtch it in 63 min­utes?".

This was my first trip in Amer­i­can Air­li­nes, is it al­ways like this?

We ar­rive in Dal­las, go through what it feels like twelve se­cu­ri­ty check­s, cus­toms check­s, den­tal check­s, and we get to the ac­tu­al USo­fA. Then Lu­cio says "OM­FG we don't have the same plane to SF!", but it's just that he's look­ing at the wrong board­ing pass.

So, to get to our plane, we get on the mono­rail, and go to the ex­act op­po­site end of the air­port, and we get in the plane with 5 min­utes to spare. Since I missed din­ner in the pre­vi­ous flight be­ing asleep, and break­fast was ab­so­lute­ly pa­thet­ic, and the new flight (a 3:50 hours one) in­cludes no meal­s, I get an ap­ple frit­ter from Dunkin Donut­s.

Oh, ap­ple frit­ter. I don't know if you re­al­ly are this de­li­cious, or I am just so hun­gry, but I loved you. You were so sweet and smooth, so sug­ary and ap­ple-y, your tex­ture so nice and your size so huge. I did love you, ap­ple frit­ter. Even if I sus­pect you gave me food poi­son­ing, it was all worth it. I'll al­ways re­mem­ber you.

So, we get on a 757 which is com­plete­ly filthy. I sus­pect the rea­son it does­n't fall apart is the willpow­er of the bazil­lion dust mites that make a liv­ing in the rat­ty seat­s. It has 14" CRT screens ev­ery few rows, and the view out the win­dow is amaz­ing, so I de­cide to look out in­stead.

We get to the air­port and we took the mono­rail, and got to pick our rental car. Giv­en the choice, of course I picked a Blue Nis­san Ver­sa! Good Car!

http://heroeswiki.com/images/thumb/b/b2/Nissan_versa.jpg/250px-Nissan_versa.jpg

I know noone re­mem­ber­s, but He­roes 1st sea­son was kin­da cool.

We have to get to our Seg­way tour in 2.5 hours. So we skip the hotel, put the suit­cas­es in the trunk, and head to Fish­er­man's Whar­f. We park, have a meal, walk there, are ear­ly, get a cup of cof­fee, get on the seg­ways, and had a ton of fun.

//ralsina.me/galleries/san_francisco_2013/P1010162.JPG

That's Al­ca­traz in the back, that's two nerds hav­ing un in the fron­t.

Af­ter we were done, we saw the sea li­ons at Pier 39, got a cup of cof­fee and a cheese sand­wich, and got back on the car, with the idea of go­ing back. Of course we did­n't ac­tu­al­ly have GP­S, or a phone that worked in the US, but we had cached map­s! And a vague idea of where the ho­tel was! So we even­tu­al­ly got there, got in­to the room, got in­to the in­ter­net, called the fam­i­ly, and I passed out of ex­haus­tion at rough;y mid­night Ar­gen­tine time, two days af­ter I got on the bus in Mar del Pla­ta.

And then I woke up, and wrote this.

Joshua Hoover / 2013-01-13 17:14:

Ha! Happy to hear you made it to the States. And I'm also happy to hear your experience on American Airlines is similar to mine. The planes are terrible, the staff is generally miserable, and you're constantly checking the time until you can get off the heap of metal.

Ale Sarco / 2013-01-13 18:55:

Más datos! Qué avión era el de la ida a Dallas? AA vuela con 777 esa ruta, me parece que fue una broma lo del piloto!
A mi me pasó esto: http://avolarporelmundo.com...

Sergio Schvezov / 2013-01-13 21:04:

Yes, all American Airlines flights are like that, if you fly a LAN code share it's also like that; if you go through Lima, you might get on a non codeshare flight (which is what you want).

At least you made it :-)

I was once on an AA flight that was delayed while we were on the plane because they couldn't close the pilot's window; we had to wait for it to be repaired before hitting the tarmac... and yup, flight made it :-)

I used to think AA as in Aerolineas Argentinas was bad, but after AA as in American Airlines, I have nothing to say anymore.

Gatox / 2013-01-14 11:39:

jajaja que divertida la foto con Lucio!

Lucas Di Pentima / 2013-01-14 13:14:

Aren't using helmets on the Segways a bit too much? :D

Roberto Alsina / 2013-01-14 15:12:

Not at all. A woman flew 5 meters head first downhill.


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