Saturday Day 1

I'm on a dial up and this is painfully slow!! So limited pics this time around. OK, 9 minutes for one image... maybe next time. By the way, there's a 4 hour difference between Alaska and eastern time. Does that mean this really took 36 minutes?

The plan was to get up around 5:00 AM but the wife was so excited we got up at 4:30. The early start got us out the driveway at 6:04, only 4 minutes later than planned. We got to the airport and through security with no hassles whatsoever and the plane even took off within about 5 minutes of the scheduled departure time.

As you might imagine I was exhausted from the buildup and was ready to sleep all the way to Seattle. But as you probably know, the seats in planes are designed so that as soon as you fall asleep your head lolls forward and you wake up. I did happen to see a fellow PTO employee (he’s in patent review) and we chatted a bit on the plane.

Our arrival in Seattle was uneventful and events seemed to be proceeding as planned. Then it started.


We got to our departure gate in Seattle and noticed that they had the tail opened on our plane. Not a good sign. Sure enough, “Ladies and gentlemen…” We got off the plane from DC at Gate C10. Road the airport subway over to N4 to depart. Got sent back to C12 because of the tail thing.

Neat thing was we boarded our new plane in about 10 minutes so spirits remained high. I’d made reservations for this trip almost a year ago, as soon as the flights and times were posted, and made sure each of us got windows on the legs over Alaskan airspace. I get to my seat (configured in two-three) and the retired guy on the isle wanted me to give up my window seat (we were in the two configuration) to his wife who was sitting on the isle behind us next to my wife, at the window.) No way. He was miffed and I knew I’d made an enemy.

We sat for about 20 minutes as they unloaded then reloaded our baggage. We could see about 8 people involved in the process. We taxied out to the tarmac when we suddenly noticed the plane turning around. What?? “Ladies and gentlemen…” There was some sort of “aircraft control” that wasn’t responding correctly. Moan! Back to the terminal and over to C9. This time we had to have our names checked off a list. (Thank goodness we hadn’t lost our boarding passes yet.) Quickly boarded and then sat. So my newfound enemy had to sit without his wife yet again. (In the meantime, an attendant and I were talking about how many MD-80s Alaska Air had at SeaTac and she said they had 11 at the airport at that particular time. We’d only gone through 3 so we had plenty in reserve.)

So new plane. But the baggage folks were getting surly. We sat and watched this very strong female baggage lady literally throw our bags onto a loading belt. She’d grab one out of the little train car and heave it as far up the belt as she could. I think the point was to see how many times she could get each bag to bounce. She actually threw more than 10 off the belt onto the ground. (I started counting after about 5 so it was more than 10!) She was so mad she even managed to rip open one bag and somebody’s socks and underwear (not mine!) were rolling around under the airplane. (I expected to hear, “Ladies and gentlemen, SeaTac closed due to socks on the runway!”)

She seemed to be by herself and was really, really pissed that she’d had to load and unload and reload our stuff so many times. Couldn’t blame her. We sat for 45 minutes before all the bags and the two dogs got transferred. (The dogs were quivering.) It was sort of comical because every time she missed the belt a collective groan went up from our side of the airplane.

After much baggage abuse we finally took off. I decided to make friends with the guy next to me and boy was I pleased that I did.

He used to work for IBM and I got him started on what he did. Turns out he was in project management and he started telling me about those old “disclosure things.” He said that in the early 70’s software was not patentable only because the patent attorneys had no idea how to word the patent applications for software. He used to sit in meetings with attorneys and the software guys would be arguing with the attorneys about the practicality of patenting software. But the attorneys couldn’t make the transition from patents to software and were resisting having to come up with the correct legalese for bits and bytes. My bud-sans-wife had some sort of division director who finally ordered the attorneys to submit a patent on the software their group was working on and thus the first true patent on software. And the eventual demise of the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletins.

The trip up from Seattle included a 6-member mixed sailor-soldier group of younger guys sitting right in front of us that tended to be rather boisterous along with a small herd of about 5 retiree aged Oklahoma cowboys and their wives and girlfriends sitting in the back of the plane having a party. Was not a restful flight.

We finally got to Fairbanks about 3 hours late and we totally missed an appointment with a Golden Greeter I’d set up.