This trip was so I could attend an all-day meeting in Quincy on Saturday. We decided to come up a day or so early so we could spend some time with the grandchildren.
10/6, Thursday. This was the first time I gave an Uber driver a less than perfect rating, mostly because he was looking at his phone quite a bit while driving, and was taking phone calls.
I had a bit of problem with CLEAR, which failed to clear me after multiple tries. The agent had to make sure I was in the system, checked my ID, and took me to the TSA agent to whom I needed to show my ID and scan my boarding pass. Pre-check worked as usual, although the luggage machines were slow. As the whole process took about 12 minutes, I can't really complain.
The A319 we were going to take wasn't full, so boarding was quite smooth. As we closed in on departure time of 2:30 pm, the pilot came on and explained they need to fix something on the plane. Turned out the co-pilot saw a screw which was loose, and which broke when he tried to screw it back in. As the screw held in place a "structural panel," it was a "no go."
I tried to book ourselves on the next flight through the United APP, it showed availability but couldn't make the change as the flight was leaving less than 60 minutes later. So we walked from gate C109 to C70 (next area), and got two middle seats. The plane was late coming in, and many wheel chairs were need to offload handicapped passengers. It came from West Palm Beach, so there were probably people leaving the area because of Ian, and quite a few looked quite old.
All said and done, Flight 1601 landed about 30 minutes before Fight 1057. So it wasn't that bad.
I also found out the A319 we boarded was about 16 years old (quite young compared to its siblings), and had been owned by China Southern Airlines.
We took a taxi to get to Somerville. It turns out not to be very expensive, and traffic was okay.
Accommodation: Putnam Road (3 nights).
10/7, Friday. Today's "main event" was a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert at Symphony Hall. The program was quite long, it started at 1:30 pm, and didn't conclude until around 3:50 pm.
We Uber'd both ways, the return trip took quite a bit longer because of traffic. Had an interesting chat with the driver Joseph who lives in New Hampshire. He also paints and one can look at his work at ddeagle.com. Lunch was at Mumbai Spice near Symphony Hall. Prices were reasonable, portions were huge, and staff was friendly. My "favorite" Kebab Corner has nothing to worry about; but alas, it is "permanently closed" per Google Maps.
BSO Concert at Symphony Hall.
10/8, Saturday. Borrowed Jess's car for an all-day meeting in Quincy. She told me afterwards that the blind spot warning system wasn't working on that car, thankful that I didn't get into any accidents. Traffic was especially busy on the way back.
The meeting with LF went well.
Dinner at Legal Seafood Assembly.
Meeting with LF in Quincy. Carol and Pasang took turns taking the group photo.
10/8, Saturday. After tidying up as much as we could, we said goodbye to the grandchildren; Joe drove us to the airport.
We had breakfast at Stephanie's, courtesy of Priority Pass. Service was much better than last time, but food was still slow coming out of the kitchen. As the gate was just across from the restaurant, it wasn't a real issue.
The flight was basically issue-free, and both Anne and I had empty seats next to us on a rather crowded flight (5 empty seats total). Only issue was we had to wait for a gate agent at Newark since the plane arrived early.
Uber surge pricing was so ridiculous (got to as high as $80) that we decided to try NJ Transit (which isn't cheap at $17 per person). It's now necessary to make a connection to get to the EWR train station, and we had only 15 minutes. We went back to Uber. By this time Uber cost only a very reasonable $38.
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