Christmas 2019: Diary – Day 16

I set my alarm to wake up early so Tomatico and I could get in a session in the gym. We managed a solid hour and kept our streak alive. During the trip, we had been to the gym 14 of the 16 days, and we were starting to feel the benefits.

Breakfast and Packing

After our workout, we snuck back into the room to shower and change while trying not to wake the rest of the family up. We went up to the lounge for breakfast and enjoyed the views for the last time.

Back in the room, we got everyone else up, and Tomatico and I finished the packing while they ate. We had a 1:00 flight, so we didn’t have to rush in the morning, but we didn’t have time actually to do any activities around the hotel.

We made sure to pack as much as we could in the bags we were going to check so we wouldn’t have to lug as much around in our backpacks. We double-checked the closets and drawers and under the beds to make sure we weren’t missing anything. We took one final look out the window at the Queen Mary across the bay and headed down to check out.

Drive to LAX

At checkout, we reviewed our bill and found everything to be as expected. We brought our stuff to the car and loaded it up. We punched in our destination into google maps and found a gas station near the rental dropoff point so we could fill it up.

The drive was uneventful, with only small pockets of moderate traffic. We gassed up the car and found the rental dropoff. The checkout was routine and we event timed it right as the shuttle bus was just about to depart.

While the rental location is only a mile or two from the airport, it took us at least 30 minutes to get dropped off at our terminal. The traffic was gridlocked, and we sat stationary for minutes at a time. LAX is notorious for bad traffic, but luckily we had plenty of time before our flight.

Waiting for our Flight

At the terminal, we found the check-in terminal to print the tags for our checked luggage. We had two bags which were free because of my wife’s JetBlue MasterCard. We found our way to security and the TSA PreCheck line, which was thankfully short.

There was a little drama at the security checkpoint as my youngest was randomly selected for a secondary check. Then his bag was separately flagged and searched. There were two water bottles in his backpack. We had put them there when leaving the Palm Springs hotel and forgotten about them. It was our fault, not his, but he took the extra attention hard. He was pretty upset at having been singled out. We’ll need to do a better job of checking our bags before security next time to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

The JetBlue terminal at LAX has only a few restaurants. We split up to get some unspectacular food for a quick lunch. The options weren’t all that great, and it wasn’t clear how or if we could get to other parts of the airport that might have more options.

Getting Home

Our plane arrived at the gate on time, and we boarded without delay. The flight home was generally uneventful. We were interested in buying some of the food onboard. It’s quite expensive, but by paying with my wife’s JetBlue card, we could get 50% off. This is if she could find the card… That card isn’t one she uses regularly and she has it in her drawer at home so she couldn’t use it on board. Oh well.

We arrived slightly ahead of schedule in Boston. Everyone was hungry, but it was getting late, and things were starting to close. We decided to split up where my wife would go with the kids to get something at the food court while I retrieved our luggage.

I found the carousel our luggage would come out on and discovered three other flights were getting unloaded there at the same time. There were a lot of people waiting for their bags. It took about 30 minutes before I spied our bags. During that time, my wife had gotten the kids fed and grabbed me something as the restaurants had closed by the time I got my bags.

I wolfed down the food, and we headed to the Lyft pickup location. In Boston it’s recently moved to a centralized place. It’s more convenient, and it’s nice that it’s sheltered with heat lamps to help in the winter. Our ride arrived shortly, and we were on our way home after a long but relaxing and rewarding trip!