Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Well, I’m sitting in the San Francisco International Airport.  I’m less than an hour away from boarding the last plane on this long journey.  If I calculated this correctly, when I arrive home in SLC, I will have been in 34 airports either departing to or arriving from somewhere.   That’s a LOT of standing in lines for boarding passes, checking in luggage, agricultural checks, immigration lines, security checks, and actually boarding the planes.  It’s hard to believe I’ve made it through all of that with two huge overweight bags (totaling 115 pounds by the time I left Hawaii)) plus a 35 pound rolling carry-on and a beach bag full to the brim as my “personal bag”.  It’s a good thing for I’ve had people traveling with me, dropping me off at airports, and kind men along the way to help me with all of my very heavy bags.

I’ve come to realize that all airports, airplanes, and airline policies are NOT the same!  It seemed that almost every encounter was different from the one before.  Once again, Delta falls to the bottom of the list as far as pricing on overweight bags.  I made sure that one of my big bags was within regulations (51 lbs.), but the other was 15 pounds overweight.  Anything between 52-70 lbs. cost $90/bag!!!  The most I’ve had to pay anywhere else was $25/bag.  Hawaiian Air also charged $27 for a second bag, so it cost me a total of $77 – STILL less than Delta.  Suzy suggested that perhaps I could use the Flat Rate Priority boxes from the post office to mail some of my things home for cheaper than the $90 overweight bag price.  What a great idea!  I filled two of the large boxes with the heaviest things I could get out of my suitcases that would fit.  That was a total of only $30 – a $60 savings!  Way to think, Suzy!!!

I went to the Oakland Temple this morning, after checking online to make sure it wasn’t closed, only to discover it WAS closed for cleaning starting today.  What luck!  I was so disappointed.  That made two temples in the past week that I had TRIED to go to only to discover they were closed for cleaning.  Someone needs to light a fire under someone at Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City because both temples had turned in their cleaning schedule, but neither schedule showed up on their website!  That really stinks!  I was super bummed!  I did get to see the temple grounds in the daylight, and the view is spectacular of San Francisco.  That’s one thing I love about most of our temples.  They are frequently built on a hill so they are easier to see and they have great views of the area.

Tayler and Meghan headed home to Salt Lake on Jan. 12 for about three weeks so that he could take the Praxis Test for entrance into the Master’s program at the U. of U.  He and Meghan both want to get their certification to teach.  Hopefully, teaching in So. Korea will give them an edge.  It will be nice to have them at home for a few weeks.  Tayler will pick me up tonight at the airport, too.

I wasn’t planning on writing this blog, so I still have more to write.  Please stay tuned…

Kadi