sitting here...

Good news... they needed my seat in coach, so I've been upgraded to first to Madrid. I could use the nice sleeper seat.

Bad news... someone at the last moment decided to get off the plane. Turns out they're a deportee. They were asked if they'd checked any bags.... they said no. Further research showed that this guy had in fact checked a bag. So they are scouring the cargo hold, looking for the errant bag... given that we're in NYC, and the circumstances... and that 9/11 is in 2 hours... we're late leaving (90 minutes so far) but I'm glad they're being thorough.

If this gets posted in Madrid, that's an indication that we didn't have further problems.

[Update] Yep, we didn't blow up in midair after all. And I slept very well :).

It is warm (mid-80s) sunny, and I need to drive to Puerta del Sol to pick up SIM cards for our phones...

Kind of familiar

My flight in went well, the rental car is modest but acceptable (except for some weird automatic shift points), and the hotel is in an unremarkable suburb but nicely furnished. Kind of like staying in Novato or Los Gatos if one were visiting SF.

Today... after check-in to the hotel, I spent an hour getting the in-house network to worki with my computer (manual, not DHCP). By then it was early afternoon, so I tried to ping Sarah and Dawn (about rooms and reservations) and I called Pat (I left my International Driver's Permit in my desk drawer at work). After a shower... off to work. I stopped at, alas, a McDonalds drive-through for my first meal in Spain this year, eating as I navigated Madrid's freeway system ;).

Today's objectives were: get the SIM cards for the work cellphones, as the dealer leaves tomorrow on a week-long vacation; look for somewhere to buy a sun awning and folding table and some chairs and some large 12V batteries; and to not fall asleep while staying active. My team member SS had taken my phone to Spain ahead of me, so I went by his hotel across from the Prado to pick it up. Since I was parked, SS and I walked to Puerto del Sol to pick up the SIM cards. One of my phones has a broken "call" key, turns out, so we also bought another phone there. Then visited El Corte Ingles (the English Cut), Madrid's huge department store chain, off of Sol. No tents or chairs or batteries, but I got a reference to a suburban big-box store that would probably have them. And we walked around... I found myself thinking a couple of times that it should have been hopeforyou with us... sigh. Not to mention geekchick, originally...

Driving in Madrid is now much less stressful for me than a year ago, even solo... and I know the basic central-city streets well enough to recover from missed turns. It seems kind of familiar, now... SS and I walked back and then had cheap-but-pretty-good paella at a bar, along with tinto del verrano (sort of a wine cooler). Then found churros and chocolate before heading back to our hotels.

Pat, Dawn and Sarah should all have landed in NYC by now, and be waiting for their flights... time for bed before I meet them in the morning.

( one plane photo... )