Clueless in Seattle - Going home

On Monday we headed down to the conference center where I caught a LITA program in progress. I came in late, so I sat down along the edge of the room and tried to be invisible, but they were doing introductions and I got spotted. Then they had a very energetic session where people were asked to write ideas down on cards and compile them for similarities at each table. I submitted two ideas that pretty much had no peers - one got the biggest laugh - LIKI, a Lita wiki. Probably there already is one and I just didn't know about it. I must admit that I was impressed enough with the spirit of the group that I plan to rejoin LITA. I dropped out years ago because it seemed a bit clubby - any volunteering effort I made was ignored, but I'm ready to give them another try.

Afterwards, I made one more circuit of the exhibits hall. I found Indus, the people who sold us a very expensive scanner and mentioned that it often takes me two tries to make the thing start up. Better solve that while we're still clearly under warranty. Also I set up a session with Blackwell to give us another load of Table of Contents records. In the afternoon we rented a car, because Donna has had a long-time goal of seeing Snoqualmie falls.




I grumbled about it but had to admit that the falls were magnificent, and the lunch at the nearby lodge was cosmic. We visited with old friends on the way home and then got back to Seattle at about 9 - I took one wrong turn that cost me a few gray hairs and about 10 minutes.

The next morning, we rushed out at 6:45 to try and get to the airport before traffic. We got on I5 and soon saw a sign advertising a turnoff to "Airport Way." I don't want to tell other people how to live their lives, but Seattlites should think about this - people from out of town might just think that road leads to the airport, instead of Dante's Industrial Inferno. That cost us good, but we got back to the airport in plenty of time to catch our plane and have a nice hot breakfast.
I insisted that we sit on the right side of the plane, because I thought that we might get a decent view of Rainier. We did, and just as the flight attendant announced that we could turn on electronic devices:



With a tailwind, we got to Chicago much quicker, but once again had to circle the city for 20 minutes. Apparently it takes the traffic controllers by surprise every day that people want to land their planes there. Time for one more quick stop at Miller's Pub, and then a quick, relatively speaking, flight back to Islip and Reality.