Home of the fancy trees

That trip, my friends, was a bit much.

To keep from having to do the brutal flight today, then do the signing tonight all wiped out, Jayme-the-wonder-publicist and I agreed that she would book a flight out of Toronto at 9pm, I would change in Las Vegas at midnight and then fly into Oakland on a flight that got here at 1:30am. Then I just had to find my luggage, grab a cab to San Francisco (since that’s where I’m flying out of tomorrow morning, and I would rather have things easy early mornings than late at night…I’m much more of a night person.) I’d arrive in the hotel at 2:30 or so, which really didn’t seem so bad. Sure…it’s late…but I really am a night person, and I could sleep in in the morning and on the flights and it would be no biggie.

Enter the part where I am an idiot. (There seem to be a lot of stories in which that problem features largely, doesn’t there?) I left Toronto at 9, stuck my yarn and my water in the back of my seat pocket and knit my way to Las Vegas to change planes while trying to figure out why I was so tired if it was only midnight.

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That’s slot machines in the airport waiting area. There are women in get-ups walking around letting you know that you can have credit for your plane ticket and start playing NOW. I don’t know what about this struck me as so appalling, but it really did. I have some objections to casinos in general, but you can choose whether or not to go into them and I respect peoples individual choice to gamble or not (although I have noticed that it is so often people who can not afford to lose a dime sitting there ) but who am I to make other peoples rules. That said, I found it sort of galling somehow to have the machines right there, in a common area that you can’t avoid. The chairs and gates are all arranged in a circle around this centrepiece of slot machines and I …well. I bought two big cookies in rapid succession, averted my eyes and knit madly on my sweater.

By the end of the wait in Vegas I was delirious. I thought maybe it was the flight or the cookies or the slots or the sweater…I couldn’t believe that I was a staggering disaster at only 12am. I somehow got myself onto the plane, slept the rest of the way to Oakland (something I never do, as I believe on some level that it is my constant vigilance that keeps planes in the air.) and staggered off the plane and into a cab for San Francisco exhausted and scarcely held together. It wasn’t until the very nice cab driver pointed out that though it was very reasonable to be tired at 2:30am, that I must be especially tired because of the time change from Toronto that I got it. It wasn’t 2:30 am….it was 5:30 am! I’d been up all night, changing planes and holding planes up in the air with the force of my will. No wonder I was tired. No wonder the sweater was almost done too.

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I left my house at 7pm and arrived at the hotel at 5:30 am…my time. That’s a lot of knitting time. The sleeve is done, the neckband is done and the first 50 cm (19″) of I-cord is done. That means all that’s left is to knit another metre of the stuff (40″), try to block it with the hotel steam iron, and I’m done. It looks good, if I finish it before I go to the bookstore I’ll try and get one of the knitters there to take a finished object picture for you. (Assuming it fits. There’s always that.)

When I got to the hotel room I fell down on the bed in my clothes and got up seven hours later and feel much better. I opened the curtains and got the surprise of my life….I’m at the ocean! (That’s the thing about arriving places at night. It isn’t until the burning bright day-star comes up that you have any idea where you are.)

The sock and I went to see it….

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But it was out when we called.

I hear it will be back later, so I’ll keep an eye out for that.

I had a lovely walk, looking for the ocean, and found a bird I think was a heron of sorts…..

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and I saw what was probably a hummingbird (that or there are some alarmingly large bees here that we should worry about) and these are palm trees…

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Which I always find exotic and impressive. I remember the first time I saw one, I looked up and thought “Wow, Movie trees!” They’ve never stopped being just so fancy and extravagant to me.

I’ve got a few hours before I head to the bookstore, (how much traffic will there be on the Golden Gate bridge at 5pm?) and I know I can finish the I-cord in that time. That means I can start my reward sweater.

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This is the yarn. I’ve got two.

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Any guesses?