i hate planning travel. i love travel once i get started, but the planning and coordinating of schedules is pants. you all know about my impending seattle trip (19 days!), but what you don’t know is that my car is crap and i don’t trust it to drive the piddly 300 miles, round-trip. yes, that’s how unsure i am of it.
i thought it would be a great idea to take the train. i love trains. i come from a family of train people. both my grandfathers worked the railroad, as did my dad and my great-uncle. and those are only the relatives i know about. according to amtrak, there is only one train per day per direction between seattle and vancouver. no problem, i thought, my schedule is fairly flexible. well, the one train from vancouver leaves at 6pm and arrives at 10pm. that is just a little too late for dinner at the space needle.
then i thought, no big deal, i’ll go friday night, book an extra night at the hotel and then just cab to the airport to meet rick’s plane saturday. nope. the hotel’s $120 US funds per night. i’m so not paying that. i could get a cheaper hotel to stay in, but then after check out, i’m left wandering around seattle with my bags for hours until his plane arrives. no. not going to do that, either.
that leaves me one option: find someone to put me up for the night. of course, none of the cool seattle bloggers even know i exist, so the chance of them finding this plea and rescuing me are nil. the one other journal-person i know just found out she’s pregnant, so the last thing i want to do is attempt to barge into their life right now. especially considering we’ve not yet met. i haven’t talked to chuck in well over a year, so i’m not going to ask him and i don’t even know if ed still lives there (which is a pity as he lived in the same neighbourhood as the hotel we’ll be staying at).
well, that’s the option if i want to take the train. i’ll probably end up on the hot, sweaty, crowded bus, goddammit. i can’t wait to change into my posh frock in the bus station lavatory.
YOU SAID PANTS!!! That was one of the first things that made me fall in love with Sam – he said something was pants! What the hell does that mean? I love it!
okay sorry – i’ll go back to reading your post now.
you’re just meeting there for one night?
Could you rent a car?
no… *sigh*
we’re there june 23rd to 28th.
but, because of the train schedule, i can’t take the train saturday (the 23rd) and still make our dinner reservations. so, i thought to come in the 22nd, but i don’t have a place to sleep. yadda yadda
better?
Oh. That’s too bad that your reservation is the same night you get there. Want me to talk to the train people and have them rearrange their schedule to get you to Seattle sooner?
At least there’s a bus. I guess renting a car would be pretty darn expensive – even if you were to just rent it for one day, and leave it in Seattle. Could you do that? Does the US take rental cars from Canada?
…the bus would REALLY suck! i’d rent a car just like paige said.
Rent a car, that’s all I’ve got. :)
what about buying a car? ;)
what about teleportation?
that always works for me….
fuck it. i’ll hitchhike.
if i wear my posh frock, i’m sure to get a lift.
Anyhow – go the night before, stay in a cheap hotel, go to the hotel you’ll be staying at the next night and ask them to hold your bags – they’ll do that – until check in time. Then go wander around having a hell of a time. Go see those three ugly girls. Etc. :)