Airport Pickup Policy Statement

When I am picked up from the San Diego airport upon return from a trip to any other time zone, I will be driven directly home without stopping for a restaurant meal with my driver, unless, at my sole discretion, I elect to do so.

I left Detroit the other day on a flight that departed at 6:15 AM. Detroit is in the Eastern time zone. Because the drive to the airport was relatively short, I only had to get up at 4:00 AM local time. I arrived in San Diego and was met by TOG and DYS at the curb at exactly 10:46 local time. That’s 3 hours later than the time I was acclimated to.

DYS has been staying at my house cat-sitting and going through my drawers and had conveniently placed her matching luggage (Wal-mart bags) on the back seat near the curbside door where I had to move them over before I could put my own suitcase in on top and scrunch in.

WISIMH:  You two have the collective intellectual capacity of Albert Einstein. He might have been smart in his day, but he died in 1955. So, zero.

TOG:  Would you be interested in going to Sammy’s for lunch?

Me:  Not particularly, I’ve been up since…

TOG: (Interrupting) We’ve been waiting at Spanish Landing for almost an hour and we’re starved and (he kept talking but I stopped listening).

WISIMH: (Interrupting) because you couldn’t be bothered to get up earlier and stop for breakfast, or bother to do the math and consider I might be a bit tired and cranky?

WISIMH: (Interrupting) And yes, that’s a rhetorical question. You know that because it has the word “consider” in it.

So, DYS drove us to Sammy’s with TOG navigating which meant we headed west to a restaurant that is due east of the airport. On the wrong freeway. And when we got there, we missed the turn I was trying to point out because I was scrunched in the back seat behind TOG who has his seat moved all the way back and who was interrupting me. In all fairness, I was whimpering more than attempting to navigate. I'd lost the will to live.

WISIMH:  Doing the math, I’ve been up since 1:00 AM local time. I spent five of those hours on a cramped plane, in a seat where my overhead light was out and the lady in the window seat pulled down the shades to nap. After our pleasant dining experience, I have to drop you off and then your sister, so it will be at least another hour even if we go directly home.  Why do I bother? I got home at 2:15.

Hence, the new policy. I have yet to write the implementing procedures, which include the option for me to pay $50 for a cab rather than be set up like this again.