A couple of weeks ago Tom asked if I would be willing to visit Chris in Los Angeles for a couple of days. Chris is fairly isolated from all of us and enjoys a visit now and then. I went the Thursday and Friday after President's holiday weekend. It would have been good to put a little more advance planning into the trip. On such short notice, I didn't get a great deal on the Flight (it was about $500.) Also, I was left to myself to make lodging arrangements.
ARB has an office real close to the courthouse that I could have stayed at. But, Tom said it wasn't the best accomodations. But, I didn't realize that the office is right next to a hotel that probably would have been fine for me to stay at. All I did was google hotels close to the courthouse and tried to pick the closest one that didn't look crappy. I don't remember the Omni coming up in that search. It looks like I could have saved ARB$40 on the room and myself having to walk 4 blocks further.
Anyway, I stayed at the Biltmore which looks and sounds really nice. The lobby and main public rooms are gorgeous. But, the room itself actually wasn't as nice as the Salt Lake City Marriott. I thought about staying with Kim or someone. But, then I would have deal with traffic and how to get downtown. I also considered briefly trying to make it to the beach Thursday evening and surf or paddle or something. Then I realized the sun would be down about the time I got to the beach.
Tom suggested I not rent a car and just take a taxi to and from the airport, $55 each way. I get a little anxious about airports and flying and all. But, the flight out was just fine. Really very little hassle at security and all. This was only the third time I have flown since 911 and I haven't really relished the thought.
Right after the cabbie dropped me off at the Museum Tower (where the ARB office is) he backed into the car right behind him. I didn't stick around. But, since I was in the lobby for a little bit I did notice that he and the driver of the other car didn't spend a lot of time talking. I don't think there was any visible damage to the car. But, I bet he gave the other driver some cash to forget about it.
I met Chris and we went to lunch at the Omni for their buffet. It was pretty good. Chris showed me around the courthouse. There was a reportable case right when we got there. He introduced me to the guys who report for the competition. We did a lot of sitting around waiting to see if anything was filed. This is right outside the family law office at the Courthouse. So, mostly the people there are divorcing or filing for child support or something like that. Interesting crowd.
There was a lot of downtime. But, we also did enough walking that my feet were quite tired. The taxi ride back to the airport at the end of the day on Friday was interesting. I noticed the car slow down at times and the tachometer race and the driver put the transmission into neutral with a concerned look on his face. We got to the airport fine. But, when I asked him, he said the transmission was acting up and he was taking the car to the shop right away.
The aircraft back to Salt Lake was even smaller than the first. It was only one seat on the left side and two on the right. The flight was arriving about 8:30pm so it was dark when we were coming into Salt Lake. As we were descending I could see the lights of Riverton/Herriman beyond the silhouette of the mountain tops just north of the Eagle Mountain area. Since you can only see out at an angle rather than straight ahead (where the pass would be) it was hard to fight some anxiety as it appeared we were quite close in altitude to the tops of the mountains. A little bit of an illusion. After we cleared the pass I was able to look right down into Kennecott Copper mine all lit up in the dark. It was pretty cool
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