I meant to finish the recap yesterday, but…unpleasantness intervened. Fortunately things are back to normal today.
I left off with Richelle and I in an almond-scented champagne dream. The next morning we had to make another flight, so we were both up early. Let me tell you something, one of the bright spots of the whole tour was stumbling down to the hotel lobby in the morning and finding a bright, perky Frau Becker with coffee in hand, since she had thoughtfully asked what we wanted from Starbuck’s in the AM before she sent us up to bed the previous night. This was enough to make me seriously offer to worship her. (She thought I was joking.)
We left from LAX, about an hour’s (and some change) worth of driving away. Frau Becker got us there in record time, helped along by light (for LA) traffic. I was looking out for the Hollywood sign as well as celebrities, and saw none. Richelle and I checked in, discovered we couldn’t get a seat together on the plane to save our lives, and decided just to grin and bear it.
Then she watched me get patted down (again) and actually Twittered it for posterity. I wish something interesting had happened, but it was just the usual two-minute deal. We tried to think of ways to jazz it up for the blog recap, but nothing really sprang to mind. (Probably because neither of us had finished our coffee.) I am, however, grateful that she didn’t get a picture of me being gleefully mauled by TSA. There’s only so much notoriety even I can handle.
Our teensy jet left from a “remote terminal,” which meant we had to climb on a shuttle and actually tool out onto the runway to a converted hangar or something. Richelle and I were discussing the suckage of the air conditioning until we actually stepped outside and realized it was so damn hot, even that early in the morning, that even the best air conditioning couldn’t make much of a dent. (Over 100 degrees in LA that day, and in the middle of all that tarmac–yech!) To add insult to injury, while coming back from the loo in said “remote terminal” I stopped dead and looked at Richelle.
“Ohmigod,” I breathed, “is that Celine Dion?”
“Where?” Richelle looked at me blankly, then glanced around. “Here?”
“No, playing.” I waved a hand vaguely to denote Muzak.
“Oh, *unrepeatable word*,” Richelle groaned. Because it WAS.
Now, I don’t precisely mind La Celine. But there is a law of Easy Listening, and the law is thus: Wherever Celine Dion is played, lo thou shall also hear one-hit wonders from the early 90s that remind thee of high school and various terrible times in thy life, world without end, amen. Right after La Celine finished telling us all about the way it is, that song from The Heights came on. Richelle and I exchanged a look usually seen between prisoners in the dock and braced ourselves.
An eternity later, shell-shocked and weary already, we were allowed to board our plane. I got to sit next to a sleeping man who only woke up to buckle his seatbelt and was still snoozing when the plane landed. (I left him on the jet, still snoring.) Richelle got to sit up in the front row, with some legroom–and a prime seat to watch our flight attendant, a monumentally, colossally bored man whose preflight safety lecture verged on performance art.
From LAX to San Jose was just over an hour. It was, like Richelle said, kind of like the jaunt between Portland and Seattle, where as soon as the plane reaches cruising altitude it’s time to start coming down for the approach. I polished off the rest of Snake Agent and cursed not having any more Detective Inspector Chen books around. We landed without incident, got to baggage claim, and were collected by another media escort, Mr. F.
Mr. F is an older gentleman who has been doing media escort for about twenty years. I had him pegged as former military or law enforcement, because he reminded me of my grandfather. He definitely was in charge the moment he collected us, and he drives a Crown Victoria.
We were deposited at the Westin Palo Alto. I immediately had to email a publicist friend of mine who waxes rhapsodic about the Westin. (I don’t blame him, they’re nice.) I suppose I was a bit zany from lack of sleep and travel stress, because my email was along the lines of, “I am at the Westin Palo Alto. I taunt you with my comfy Westin bed.” I almost typed ALL YOUR WESTIN ARE BELONG TO US, but I had limited connectivity and a teensy-tiny netbook keyboard, and that was just too much work. Fortunately my friend understood, because the reply came back within minutes: “HAHAHAHA. Steal me a pillow, pls.”
It was at the Westin that I called home and discovered that there was an Awful Smell in our driveway, near our elderly neighbor’s house. Like, a Really Awful, Something Is Dead smell. There was nothing I could do from California, and Coyote Boy was reluctant to call anyone official without me there. “Wait until I get home,” I said. “Then I’ll investigate.”
Don’t worry. That particular story has a happy ending. Kind of.
Now, lest you think we were swimming in the lap of luxury, let me tell you this: we did manage a lunch by the pool, but had to cut it short to go freshen up. Because there were stock signings. Which are exhausting in their own right.
We visited several bookstores. One, Hicklebee’s, was twenty minutes away in good traffic, but there were three accidents on the way. The irony was that Richelle and I were both delighted with the store and wanted to stay and shop, but we had no time due to said traffic. We did get a chance to sign the wall in the back rooms. (I signed near the loos. Because I’m that way.) Then it was time to zoom for the event of the evening, Books Inc. in Palo Alto hosting us for Not Your Mother’s Book Club.
By that time I was seriously wilting. I don’t do well with hot weather, and my style of dressing (black, long sleeves, cover up the tats) doesn’t help. Plus I had a sore throat and a headache, and suspected I was coming down with travel ick.
But we walked into the store to find a crowd, and there I found out Richelle is an honest to God rock star. They started screaming when they saw her. It was amazing. We were whisked into the back room to wait for the start of the event, and Richelle and I competed for “most stage fright.” I still don’t know who won.
The event was miraculous and stunning. There was silence (except for a few baby cries) while I read, and I actually got very nervous thinking I was boring everyone. But the fans told me they liked it, so I guess it was okay. I met oodles of fans, and Richelle signed for two and a half hours or thereabouts. The staff kept everything going like clockwork, and I got to meet an Orycon fan I hadn’t seen for two years (hey, dude!) and also Alt3Sparky, who provides me with mental health breaks over Twitter. (How she finds those links I’ll never know.) I signed until my wrist ached–lots of people had Valentine or Kismet books, and I even saw a few Steelflowers. Books Inc. told me later they sold out of the book I was touring for, >Strange Angels. It was intense and amazing.
The Books Inc. staff were marvelous, and presented Richelle and I with lovely little gifts at the end of the night’s festivities. (Thanks, guys!) After that, we had planned to go to what we were told was the best restaurant around, but I was seriously exhausted and my head felt like it was about to fall off. So I opted to go back to the hotel, and Richelle went with me. We ended up grabbing a bite at the Westin’s restaurant, which has marvelous chocolatinis. It was our last night on the tour together, so we didn’t want to end it…but eventually we had to go to bed.
I got up early to catch a ride with Mr. F and Richelle to the airport the next morning. It was official, I had a cold. So I bumbled around downstairs in search of DayQuil, found some, sought coffee, found none, and had to get ready to go. Mr. F took us to the airport, which we got to see fully for the first time. San Jose is building a new terminal, and I found it utterly ironic that said new terminal looks a little like a train or an Airstream trailer. It will probably be gorgeous once it’s finished, but for right now it’s an airport terminal that looks like a bullet train.
Mr. F would not let either of us lift our baggage until the last possible moment. Richelle and I hugged, and she was off to her airline and I was off to mine. I felt a bit at sea, not having someone else to fuss over while I traveled. (It’s how I keep my own nervousness in check.) I was a ball of nerves and cold medication until boarding.
Funny thing: I was sitting at the gate reading my Bitch Magazine (I’d saved it for my last day of travel) and a very pretty Goth girl passed me on her way to the plane for Reno. “Excuse me. But I love your choice of reading material!” she said, indicating the magazine and smiling. “We’re everywhere!” I responded, and we both laughed before she hurried off to catch her flight.
Finally, boarding. I’d paid for an upgrade, so I got to settle into a window seat; a businessman took the aisle seat and we both tried to look menacing to keep the one between us from getting filled. Fortunately the flight wasn’t full at all, and I was sniffling and coughing so nobody wanted to come near me. I was in a lather to get home, too.
When your head is stuffed, the approach into Portland’s airport from San Jose–which is oddly staggered–can be a total bitchkitty. Like, spikes-through-the-sinuses and more-spikes-through-one-ear horrid. I had a fever by the time we touched down. Thankfully the decongestant eased a lot of the pain as soon as I could discreetly blow my nose after landing. We actually touched down a bit early and had to wait for a gate, for about five minutes. I was in an agony of impatience.
I called the Selkie. By the time I’d grabbed my luggage and made it to the upper level, she was over the river from the bookstore and at the kerb to pick me up. She even brought me more coffee, bless her thoroughgoing little heart. Twenty minutes from the time I picked up my baggage, I was in my own driveway.
Remember the Awful Smell? It turns out our elderly neighbor–who I’d been worrying about–is fine. The smell was a small animal who had crept into our yard-waste bin to shuffle off its mortal coil. Thankfully Coyote Boy figured this out before I got home, so I didn’t have to deal with it. He also cleaned the whole kitchen from top to bottom, and he and the kids tidied the house while I was gone, too. So I came home to significantly less chaos than I feared. The Selkie dropped me off, gave me a hug, and told me to drink plenty of fluids. The kids tackled me, wrestled me to the ground and hugged me. Coyote Boy showed me the kitchen and endured a hug and a hair-ruffling while looking secretly very pleased with himself. The cats, alas, ignored me until I started unpacking, at which point they demanded I come look at their food and water bowls, both of which were full.
And I was home.
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