The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

Too Much Analysis of an Overextended College Student Dwelling in a Capitol City

Archive for category Travel

Winter 2009-10 Travel Itinerary

Dec 15

Posted by Douglas Bell in Personal, Travel | 3 Comments

I know that I’m in the middle of a blog series (one that I’m about a day behind on), but it is generally a tradition of mine to mention my travel itineraries on my blog for people who care enough about me to follow, and I realized that I haven’t done so yet here on my blog for my winter break round trip.

As I just (mostly) finished packing for this trip, I actually found doing so a bit interesting. Coming from my home in the Bay Area here to DC back in August was a major expedition, pretty much equivalent to moving house. (Hence why I gave it the codename “Operation Uproot.”) But packing to head back home is really more like packing to go on a vacation. I’m only taking one suitcase plus a carry-on, as opposed to last August when I had two bags, a carry-on, and a huge package shipped ahead of time. Since I’m not changing dorms next semester, a lot of my stuff is staying here, since home will already have most of the amenities I need (not to mention free food).

I’m sure this seems like “well, duh” to most of my readers, but it feels very bizarre to me, noting that I haven’t taken long vacations to visit family anytime before in my life. (Well, once in 1995, but I have no memories of that.) It’s also weird how I’m packing for my return home the way that I would normally pack for leaving from home. But, I digress.

Today (Tuesday) is going to be a long 14-hour travel day. About eight hours from now (yes, I know, I need to go to sleep), I’ll be hopping on the AU shuttle over to the Tenleytown-AU Metro stop that I know so well. From there, I’ll be on the Red line to Fort Totten (yes, the infamous Fort Totten where that big crash happened last June; but I’ve ridden through there many times now, so no worries), and transfer to the Green line to Greenbelt, Maryland, getting there at 11:07. (The Green line goes to Greenbelt, and I’ve always wondered if that was a coincidence or not.) From there I hop on an express Metrobus to Baltimore/Washington Airport, getting there at 11:48.

I will be flying on Southwest Airlines flight 3930, departing Baltimore at 1:40 PM EST, and arriving in Oakland at 6:25 PM PST. Yep, it’s almost an eight-hour flight, thanks to the fact that it stops in–of all places–Albuquerque, New Mexico at 4:15 PM MST. Random, but oh well. From OAK, I then will have about an hour and a half of time where I will be taking BART over to Millbrae, where my folks will pick me up. Yeah, I get to ride Metro and BART on the same day–cool!

I get to enjoy a 23-day vacation at home, and will be flying back out on January 8th. That schedule will be an insane one, as I’m going to have to try to catch a 6:50 AM flight out of Oakland. Might not be able to take BART for that one. That’s Southwest flight 517, and it arrives at Chicago Midway (a much more sensible place) at 1:00 PM CST, where I make a connection to Southwest flight 2745 departing at 1:35 PM CST and arriving at Baltimore at 4:20 PM EST. The trip back to the AU campus is the exact opposite of today’s itinerary.

So there’s my travel plans; head on over to your flight trackers if you’re so interested. ;)

Operation Uproot, Part II

Aug 15

Posted by Douglas Bell in College Life, Personal, Travel | Comments off

Editor’s Note: This post was written while I was on the airplane about 8 hours ago. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t post it then. ;) I am now at AU, posting this from my dorm.

Well, I guess that I was going to post this yesterday, but yesterday turned out to be quite a hectic day that it didn’t work out. Instead, I’m actually writing this blog post on the plane. Guess it works out, since I do need something to occupy myself for the next few hours, right? ;)

Fortunately, yesterday didn’t turn out to be a big all-packing all-day day. Maybe that would have reduced the evening stress a bit, but it did provide the opportunity for a nice chance to go around San Mateo one last time. My parents and I took our harp-flute-cello trio to the park one last time, and despite it being a little bit windy, we actually had a bit of an audience this time.

Unfortunately, yesterday wound up being the big room-cleaning that I had procrastinated on during the summer. In some ways, that might have been a good thing, because when you’re about to move away for four months, the pack-rat tendency is significantly mitigated. Essentially for all of the stuff that I’ve accumulated and has been sitting around making a mess in my room all these years for no reason, it can either come with me, get kept somewhere at home, passed along to my family, or get recycled. Because the first two have significant space limitations, you can bet that I doubled the size of our paper recycling pile yesterday. So now the room is nice and clean which is good since my brother has it to himself now. The downside: DUST! So yesterday and today I’ve got a bit of hay fever, though the plane ride has been helping to improve it a bit.
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Operation Uproot, Part I

Aug 13

Posted by Douglas Bell in College Life, Personal, Travel | Comments off

Because I’ve just got to come up with a pointless weird “code name” for everything these days, I guess.

Still, can you believe it? Or rather, can I believe it? In only 40 hours, I will be on a plane en route to Washington-Dulles Airport, and from there, to my new intermittent home for the next 4 years (and continuously for the next 4 months): American University. Well, here’s my actual itinerary anyway (Skoker, if you’re reading this, I want your juicy trademark airplane/flight details!):

I’ll be on Virgin America Flight 78, which departs SFO at 9:25 AM and arrives at IAD at 5:35 PM, or a 5 hour direct flight +3 hours timezone difference. Not bad, eh? Guess it’s a good thing my parents booked that when it was cheap, about 4 months ago (even if I wasn’t psychologically ready for that thought at the time).
Now because I’m a public transit addict, I ain’t taking no shuttle or taxi service! (Not unless the flight has a multi-hour delay, knock on wood.) Of course I’m getting there with the Washington Metro! I’ve even got my SmarTrip Card already with $25 of value on it. :) From Dulles, I’ll be taking Metrobus 5A to the Rosslyn Metrorail station. From there, I just have to take the Orange or Blue line to Metro Center station and transfer to the Red Line up to the Tenleytown-AU station. An AU shuttle bus connects between there to my dorm where I will then check in. At the earliest, it will be about 7:30 PM at this point, so yeah, Saturday will essentially be a full day spent traveling.
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