Amazing Disappearing Post

I was in Starbucks on The Alameda plunking away at a journal entry after getting back to SJ too late to avoid rush hour, posted it, and it is gone. It is not even on my netbook, which generally saves the last item I was working on, posted or not. Hmmm.

Not much to say about today. I was up on time, had breakfast at the motel lobby, finished packing and walked to the train station an hour earlier than I'd planned. I got to watch the LA passengers leave. This time I was taking the Pacific Surfliner, which is the local version of the Coast Starlight, sort of. Instead of LA to Seattle, it goes from San Diego to San Luis Obispo. It was supposed to depart Santa Barbara at 10:15 to make a 12:50 bus connection to SJ.

It was 35 minutes late getting into SBA. The conductor blamed it on having to "hand-crank" three wheelchair passenger on board, but I don't buy that for an instant. Maybe 5 minutes of the lateness was due to that. When the train was announced as pulling into SBA, it was a false alarm - a long, long, empty freight train was coming in from the other direction, and the Surfliner was delayed until it went by. So much for the alleged Amtrak right-of-way law.

We were later and later into each stop, and got to SLO an hour late. The bus is an Amtrak bus, and it starts in SLO, so it had to wait for us. I knew the bus would not be as comfortable as the train, but did not expect my carry-on to be too big for the overhead rack. And I did not expect the restroom to be "for emergencies only".  Because we were so late, the driver announced that they would not make the usual food stop in King City, but he forgot there were passengers to let off there, and the 5-minute drop-off ended up being a half hour restroom and food stop. If I had known, I would have gotten off the bus and grabbed some food, but by the time it was clear this was not going to be a short stop it was too late.

The bus made more stops than I had expected. Paso Robles, King City, Salinas. We arrived in SJ about 5:30, and not wanting to fight rush hour traffic, I drove half a mile to a Starbucks on the Alameda where I spilled half an iced venti chai latte, finished the rest while plunking out the mystery posting, and then walked a block and a half to a place called Tee Nee Thai, which caught my eye because of the pun. It is a tiny space, and in Thai "Tee Nee" means "In here" or "over here".

The seating is cramped, tables are too close together, and it was a surprise to see a white guy as host/waiter. Two Thai women showed up later. I ordered Something Different™: Tee Nee Special Duck which said it was boneless duck grilled with garlic and served over Chinese noodles. It was delicious, but those noodles were not Chinese. They were some very thin ramen-like wheat noodles, and they were (blasphemy!) served with a knife because they were basically a bird's nest, impossible to handle without cutting. I may eat there again, but I'll stick to what I know. And I'll ask the white guy if he speaks Thai.

Home, got the photos onto the PC. I don't think there will be much going onto Flickr. The window glare on the trains and bus was worse than I thought, ISO 1600 was noisier than usual, so pretty much none of my en route photos are worth uploading. There are some from the LandShark ride and walking around town which are not so bad, except the camera keeps screwing up the exposures.

Completely forgot about BASFA. Oh well.

Opened the pickles which I'd put in the fridge Friday evening. This batch is milder and crunchier than the last, which was the whole point of trying again.

Plans for tomorrow:
Make an appointment for the car recall/35,000 mile checkup for wednesday.
Laundry