January 27, 2014

Chapter 1
Travel Troubles

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Waking up and grabbing my phone, the first email I opened let us know that our flight had been canceled. Now, while this was the first time we’d ever faced this particular challenge, I can tell you that it’s pretty much some of the worst travel news you can possibly get.

Southwest had us call, and the agent we spoke to told us the first direct flight into SFO that she could put us on would get in at around 6:00pm (our original flight would have had us landing around lunchtime). Seriously bummed out, we started trying to think through other options, and then we wondered whether there was a possibility of us flying into another airport and then taking ground transportation into the city. We called Southwest again, and they listed options for flying into either Oakland or San Jose. We weren’t really sure which option would be better, so we chose a San Jose flight that was leaving in just a couple hours.

Back on track, we headed to John Wayne and whizzed through security. Before long, we were en route. This flight was one of the shortest I’d ever been on, and we landed in the Bay after less than an hour in the air. Now we had to try to figure out how to get into San Francisco from here. We decided that a cab was probably our best option because we needed to meet our AirBNB host at a specific time. It was going to be an expensive ride on the CoolTech dime, but it was basically our only option without trying to delve into research about lengthy train rides there at the airport.

Hailing a cab was easy, and we were soon on our way.

It was sort of a fun drive to make because lots of the journey was past scenic water, and the rest was through Silicon Valley cities that we’d always heard the names of but never seen before. It seemed like every few minutes, we’d drive past the headquarters of various app companies, Internet giants, and other tech conglomerates.

Before long, we were crossing some bridge (this was the wrong direction for the Golden Gate Bridge) into San Francisco.

Luckily, our cab driver—or, rather, his GPS—knew where we were going as we attempted to get to Telegraph Hill.

It took a while, but we finally made it to our street and found the address for our AirBNB apartment. If you want to see an example of San Francisco’s famous hills, the Telegraph Hill neighborhood is where to go. This was the view down the street.

And this picture will give you a good idea what the grade was like.

Tracy had chatted on the phone with our property manager to let him know where we were, and he told her that he was at the grocery store getting us some amenities (which sounded good to us!). Here’s the view of the outside of the building while we waited.

Tracy on the phone.

And lots of bird feeders outside the windows.

After maybe 10 minutes, he showed up—grocery bags in hand—to let us in. We were big fans of the property manager. He seemed like a cool guy and was very laid back about the whole AirBNB setup (I’m sure it helped that we looked trustworthy).

We got the grand tour (which wasn’t super grand in the one-bedroom apartment), and we were very happy with the look of the place. He also unloaded the snacks he’d bought us and let us know a little about the neighborhood. All in all, though the day had started out poorly, it was shaping up to be a great first afternoon here in the City by the Bay.

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