#51 - My first travel to Oregon in 8 years

Friday, February 24

So this post, and the next several, are a little delayed.  I took my company laptop to Oregon with me, and was unable to get online.  It seems to have issues connecting to any wifi network outside of the office, and I was unable to get it to reliably connect there.

Today I am thankful for being an unelected Premier.

I stayed up late last night watching the Weather Channel, so I'd be ready in case we had bad weather coming out of Westchester County Airport.  Snow in Chicago, lots of delays for O'Hare, but NY state was supposed to be clear.  I walked out of the hotel at 5am to 3 inches of wet snow, 36 degrees, and more snow falling.  I got on the road and was making good time down I-84 when traffic stopped.  We were stuck there for 90 minutes.  I-84 had been closed, traffic was rerouted through local highways.  In total, the delays cost me 2 hours.  I had allotted 60 minutes for drive time, to get me to the airport 2 hours early.  I knew by 7 that I would not make my flight on time.  But what are you going to do?

I got to HPN (Westchester County Airport in White Plains) at 8:24 for my 8:30 flight.  Buth the 7:30 ORD flight and the 8:30 ORD flight were delayed.  I got to the checkin counter.  The agent checked me in, realized I was Premier, and sent me to another agent.  She booked me on the earlier flight (the 7:30), gave me a window seat in Economy Plus, and sent me on my way.  The flight was done boarding at 9, and we spent some time waiting to take off for some reason.  But we got to ORD an hour after I was originally scheduled to be there.  My conecting flight to PDX was also delayed by about an hour.  So I got on the plane, and landed at PDX about 40 minutes later than originally planned.

Overall, the travel went well.  I'll share some pics from the day later.  They're on my phone, and I need to post this and get to sleep tonight.

When I got home, I got my bags out of the car and walked into a different house.  It has changed tremendously since I last saw it.  All the kids had things to show me, and things they wanted to say and do.  Aria wanted to go to her school's talent show.  So we went.  It was a good show, and a good time for us.  I like spending time with her - she reminds me a lot of some very good friends I had in high school.

Today's picture is from a few weeks ago.  I spent about an hour in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Washington Irving set his famous story, and where he is laid to rest. The church he attended is in this shot, "in continuous use except in Revolution:".  It's called the Old Dutch Church.  Irving's family's plot is behind the photographer, up and around a hill.  Some more of these pictures are pretty interesting (to me), and they may come out in dribs and drabs when I don't have a convenient picture to post.