Shoutie

[Rexer]

Tomorrow I will be traveling to Maxis' headquarters in Emeryville, California. I will be gone for just two days, including travel time to and from the airport. I will leave home around 9am for a 12:10 departure from the Birmingham, Alabama airport. I will spend Thursday evening in Emeryville, and all day Friday I will be at Maxis. While there I will be participating in Spore Community Day, an event for North American web site owners to preview Spore. I will return to Birmingham at 8:30 Saturday morning. My impressions and previews of Spore will be shown in the Spore thread, and I hope for the opportunity to interviews Spore developers using digital audio for the Podcast. This thread, however, is devoted to the travel itself. This will be the travel journal of the trip.

My flight arrangements are (times are local):

Thursday, August 21

DELTA AIR LINES INC, DL 7448
Operated by: EXPRESSJET FOR CONTINENTAL AIRLINES
From: BIRMINGHAM AL, AL (BHM) Departs: 12:10pm
To: HOUSTON GEO BUSH, TX (IAH) Arrives: 1:55pm
Aircraft: EMBRAER JET Mileage: 566
Duration: 1 hour(s) and 45 minute(s)

DELTA AIR LINES INC, DL 7190
Operated by: CONTINENTAL AIRLINES
From: HOUSTON GEO BUSH, TX (IAH) Departs: 3:30pm
To: SAN FRANCISCO, CA (SFO) Arrives: 5:30pm
Aircraft: BOEING 737-800 JET Mileage: 1641
Duration: 4 hour(s) and 0 minute(s)
Sat, Aug 23




DELTA AIR LINES INC, DL 1074
From: SAN FRANCISCO, CA (SFO) Departs: 10:25pm - Fri, Aug 22
To: ATLANTA, GA (ATL) Arrives: 6:03am - Sat, Aug 23
Aircraft: BOEING 767 JET Mileage: 2135
Duration: 4 hour(s) and 38 minute(s)

Sat, Aug 23
Flights: DELTA AIR LINES INC, DL 4497
Operated by: ATLANTIC SOUTHEAST
From: ATLANTA, GA (ATL) Departs: 8:36am
To: BIRMINGHAM AL, AL (BHM) Arrives: 8:30am
Aircraft: CRJ-CANADAIR REGIONAL JET Mileage: 134
Duration: 54 minute(s)

[djVanDrake]

PICTURES PLEASE!!!!!!!

Have a good trip.

[Jirnsum]

Have fun Rex. As I said: I will wave when I fly overhead

[john]

"Aircraft: BOEING 767 JET"

One of your's, Deej!

[Nick C.T.]

I bet your stoked man! Take as many pictures as possible! Yay for Simphoni!

[djVanDrake]

"Aircraft: BOEING 767 JET"

One of your's, Deej!

Yep. No Airbus products in the lineup this time. If he were closer to a major airport, then it'd be all the bigger birds.

Maybe Rex will have a chance for some sighseeing in Frisco too? Sounds like a busy trip though.

[Serena]

Have a good trip Rex!

[john]

Maybe Rex will have a chance for some sighseeing in Frisco too? Sounds like a busy trip though.

Pics! Typical SF stuff. At least one cable car and a gay couple.

[trixin]

Maybe Rex will have a chance for some sighseeing in Frisco too? Sounds like a busy trip though.

Pics! Typical SF stuff. At least one cable car and a gay couple.

Why don't you just go to Google and look those up yourself? I'm sure they're not THAT hard to find...

Have an awesome trip Rex! Don't forget my little request either

[Rexer]

I won't forget, Trixin.

I am shutting down for the night now. I will glance at emails and this thread and the one in the Spore forum for about 1/2 second before launching myself toward the airport in about 7 hours. Have me in your thoughts the next two days, as I will have all of you in mine. I'm proud to be representing this site.

[edcaze2k3]

if i was making that same trip i would drive

have a safe journey Rexer!

[usman]

Have a safe journey, Rex! Can't wait to have you back!

[djVanDrake]

if i was making that same trip i would drive

have a safe journey Rexer!

It's a three day drive from 'Bama to Frisco. (two if you have one of those "Offical Pace Car" logo camaro's )

Safe journey Rex!

[Rexer]

The three-day (four, really) drive to San Francisco would have been a pleasant one if I had the time. More pleasant certainly than this day of traveling has been. Actually as it turned out, by the time I left Houston I could have been there and had my car with me if I hadn't stopped in Birmingham and gotten on an airplane.

I was 90 minutes late taking off from Birminingham because of a late arrival of the aircraft. Then, having lost our landing slot in Houton, we spend another 60+ minutes circling east Texas waiting for another slot to land. So, I missed my 3:30 connection to San Fransisco and was booked on the next flight leaving at 5:57. It took off at 7:45 because the flight crew did not arrive from Laguardia until 7:10. We landed in San Francisco (or crashed, for the first few seconds I wasn't sure) at around 9:30 pm. That was a four hour flight, loosing two hours across time zones.

I am exhausted and feel as though now I need to burn the clothes I was wearing all day, starting with the socks. Both aircraft were very uncomfortable. The first was a ERJ regional jet and I was fortunate enough to get a left-side seat, which was both window and aisle seat combined. Those RJs have only one seat left of the aisle. But it was tiny! I am a bit overweight, but I am not a large man. I felt like King Kong squeezed into a Mini Cooper. My laptop bag would not fit either under the seat or in the overhead. It is a larger style roller laptop bag, but still only half the size of most carry-on roller bags. The second aircraft was a 737-800/900 (according to the safety card). It is the first seven-three I have ever seen with turned-up wing tips. I had an aisle seat there, which was a bit of a shame because I would have liked to get aerial photos. That seat was tiny also, and had only one comfortable position, which no matter how comfortable becomes a torture device after the first two hours. Now I am at the hotel finally, and my comfort meter is pegging the red and my hygiene meter is bright orange. Now, having learned important lessons from endless hours of playint The Sims, I am going to hit the hot tub to set both of those conditions back to bright green.

The Limo drive was nicer and friendly. He met me at the baggage claim and brought me straight to the hotel. Well, almost. When we got to the intersection, the hotel was right in front of us to the right across the street, and he made a left turn! He immediately made a u-turn in the middle of the street (which is legal in California) to right himself. I mean, while sitting at the light, you would have to be blind not to see the hotel sign right in front to the right, but I didn't say anything, figuring I have never been here before and he's the limo driver, so he must know what he is doing. I have driven from SFO airport to Oakland several times in rented cars and it never fails to astonish me. When you decdend from the hills into downtown, you round a curve and are confrunted with a dramatic enormous wall of tall buildings. It is one of the most breathtaking cityscapes I know of anywhere. I can never cross the Oakland Bay Bridge without thinking of that 1987 World Series earthquake and the tragedy that happened when the upper deck collapsed onto the lower deck. The hotel and Maxis are just at the eastern end of that bridge.

The young lady who checked me in at the front desk was delightful! She has a bubbly personality and a gorgeous strong Russian accent, having been in the Bay Area only 1 year. We chatted and joked around a bit and talked about accents (she says that mine is very understandable, unlike most people from the deep south to her). I asked her to say, “Moose and squirrel” for me, but she didn’t know what I was talking about, and I didn’t want to seem mean and appear to be mocking her, so I let it go. I liked her a lot, a very nice person. If I lived here I would ask here out, and she might accept if I were 20 years younger or she needed a way to stay in the country. LOL!

I think the Maxis Studios is within a walk from here, judging by something Maxis Cactus wrote in the itinerary. So I am going to take a short nighttime photographic tour. before torching my attire and hitting the hot tub. The room is pretty nice, with a king bed. I expect to be in it by midnight, which is 45 minutes from now, and I’ll be up at 7am to get some breakfast, pack up all my stuff that is on charge (laptop, camera, cell phone, and audio recorder), and meet Maxis Cactus in the lobby at 9:15.

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[Jirnsum]

Good to know you arrived safely Rex. Have fun!



(...and sorry, but I cannot feel sorry for you flying in an uncomfortable position on those very short hops try to make a real trip flying coach sometime and then we'll talk)

[Gil]

Good to know you arrived there

Probably even worse than flying for a long time is spending hours in a bus from Riga to Warsaw airplane seats are so much better.

[usman]

Glad to know you arrived safe & sound! And dont forget to take lots of pictures, especially of the lady in the front desk.

[john]

And get her to say "Moose and Squirrel"!

[djVanDrake]

Your bird was likely a -800. There aren't many -900s in service yet and almost all the new -800s have the blended winglets.

Enjoy your day!

[Rexer]

More discomfort and more late flights coming home. The 767 from SFO to ATL was nice, but I had an aisle seat so I was unable to sleep during the long red-eye flight. A just arrived back home. I have not slept in about 26.5 hours, since waking up at 6:45 Pacific time on Friday morning before visiting Maxis.

But all the discomfort and travel headaches were SO WORTH IT! I met a lot of people and made a lot of new friends, both at Maxia and in the Spore fansite community. I will post my experiences of visiting Maxis in the thread that I already established in the Spore forum, and I will start a new thread there to be just about Spore and what I have learned from playing it and talking to the great people at Maxis. There is a lot of new information about Spore to discuss, and the first thing I will do it to put a lot of it out there to start talking about, and then i will take about four hours of sleep. Then, I should feel energetic enough to come back out here and start posting more, including the lists of the people I met and interviewed, and post several photos, video and audio taken during the trip.