sickI had a long wait at PDX, which normally is not a bad thing at all, for that airport is IMO the most comfortable place to catch a plane that I've ever been. However, being all sick and wrung-out the way I am, the idea of having lunch turned my stomach (it still does, seven hours later), and so I merely checked my mail and limped down to the Horizon A gates, where something like six flights (including mine) were scheduled to depart during a twenty-minute span. This may have caused some confusion, because after the flight attendant came through the plane to "count the house," she got on the PA and said, "We want to make sure that everyone here is going to Oakland, because there is one extra passenger on our seat count." I feared that they were going to "dump" the plane and make us start over, but they apparently figured it out, because we did get on our way.
I was too sick to read (which should show you how troubled I was), but I listened to some old radio shows once it was allowed. I wanted to sleep, but it's impossible in those seats.
At Oakland, I made my way slowly to baggage claim and wasn't troubled by my bag being the last one off the belt or by having the maximum waiting time for the AirBART bus, because I had more than an hour before the Amtrak Capitol for San Jose was scheduled to stop at Coliseum. I trudged across the skybridge between the BART station and the Amtrak station (and the Coliseum), and found that the ticket vending machine was gone. (An Amtrak conductor later told me that they had pulled them out because they kept getting vandalized.)
The train was almost five minutes early, but it waited for its 5:40 PM departure time. The conductor wasn't thrilled when I produced a credit card to buy my ticket. They'd much rather do cash sales. Credit cards take a long time to process, although they can do them. As it happens, they didn't get back to me until after Hayward, and it took the conductor nearly the entire transit time between Hayward and Fremont/Centerville to sell me the ticket. Also, he can't enter my Amtrak Guest Rewards program number with the remote terminals they carry; he told me I have to take the receipt to a staffed station to get credit for it. Alas, this is one of the ways in which Amtrak sometimes acts as though it wants to be an airline.
Getting to Centerville on time, I limped home, wishing that I'd driven to the station for a change. I then sent off several messages to people explaining that I'm too sick to go to BASFA and that some back-and-forth exchanges of post-OryCon bags and papers will have to wait until later.
Lisa had a milder illness than me. If this was food poisoning (and it has many of the signs of it), then the most likely culprit was the sausage on the steam table at the breakfast buffet, as I ate more of it than Lisa did.
I'm going to bed now and hope I feel better tomorrow. I've already put in notice that I'll have to work from home, assuming I don't end up taking the entire day off sick instead.