In the spring, thoughts turn towards Ralph’s

Today, we flew back to JFK for a long-planned vacation trip, starting with a few days of cleaning out Diane’s Dad’s house now that he’s moved to Tucscon. This time around, we flew JetBlue, and left from Oakland (significantly cheaper than San Jose), so at least I didn’t make precisely the reverse of my trip of yesterday — but it was close enough. JetBlue was fine, as always, and the food we packed to bring on the plane was tasty (and their snacks were OK). It was Jeff and Diane’s first time on JetBlue, and the DirecTV was a hit (and I didn’t mind it, either — in fact, I probably watched the most of the three of us).

Hertz gave us an upgrade to a Volvo S60, which was a nice surprise (and I prefer it to the SUVs they’ve been giving me in California). I didn’t expect to have any trouble finding the hotel, but I was wrong — even though I had the address. I knew it was near where Merrick Road and Sunrise Highway cross; I didn’t realize it was actually on the ramp between the two westbound streets, and therefore only reachable if you’re travelling west. We, of course, were travelling east from JFK, so we had to overshoot and look around.

But while we were searching, we passed the Rockville Center location of Ralph’s Italian Ices. I hadn’t expected them to open until at least Easter (and maybe later, based on the weather here lately), but they were lit up and taking orders at the walk-up window. So Jeff and I had our first ices of the season.

And now we’re in the hotel, waiting to feel tired enough to call it a night. I have a feeling I’m going to be the first one to fade.

Sleep?

When I attended the (late, lamented) IBM Systems Research Institute, I spent 10 weeks in a Manhattan hotel; for the first couple of nights, the traffic noise kept me awake — but I eventually adapted and learned to sleep through fire engines and everything else that New York City had to offer.

But that was over 20 years ago, and I’ve clearly lost my adaptation to such conditions; I spent far too much of last night listening to the traffic on the Grand Central Parkway instead of sleeping. But eventually, I did drift off, only to be awakened by my alarm clock at 5:30am.

Somewhat to my surprise, I wasn’t the first customer for breakfast, but I think I was the second person in the dining room. Breakfast was fine and reasonably quick. So was the traffic on the way to Kennedy, and I was in the new American terminal well before 8am. The check-in area there looks like it’s at a modern airport, unlike the old check-in area — even though I had checked in via the web, I got in line in the hope that my upgrade had cleared. It hadn’t, but the agent moved me to seat 10B, which gave me a bit more legroom. Then I had to hike over to Terminal 8, because that’s where the San Francisco flights are. Terminal 8 is still its old grubby self, though there were signs claiming it would be updated by spring 2007.

The flight home was uneventful, but as soon as I turned on my phone when we landed, it told me I had a bunch of voicemails. And dealing with that kept me busy the rest of the day (well, I also zipped into the office to deal with a small problem on my computer there, which made me feel better even though it was probably a mistake to go in).

More anon….