8 Nov 2025
My flight out isn’t until 2pm, I have to check out by 10am; but it won’t take me long to pack, so I slept in (well, til 7am), lazed and got ready at a leisurely pace.
Farewell, Redwood Hollow Cabins:
Most of the time I was here there was only one or 2 cars here, a third car started appearing yesterday- maybe it’s just low season, or maybe my fears of not being able to get a parking spot were unfounded. Either way, taking the bus worked just fine for this trip.
Farewell, La Jolla Tidepools:
I’ve still got several hours to kill before my flight, so I decided to visit Liberty Public Market:
which is just across the river from the airport
This part of the market is full of food stalls:
I opted for a 6 pack (actually 7- they threw in an extra!) of mini donuts:
And, since that didn’t quite fill me, a scone from another bakery:
There was a Peruvian restaurant that opened at 11am, so stuck around long enough to pick up a chicha morada, which is an amazing spiced purple corn drink I discovered many years ago:
Then began my walk over to the airport:
Despite the chaos with flight cancellations, I made it through security smoothly and our flight left pretty much on time:
Farewell, warmth!
Hello, cold rainy Chicago:
I had a tight connection here- less than an hour, and we had the usual half-hour taxi to our gate, then another delay while they unloaded some bags (apparently there was a balance issue). I sprinted across the airport and made it to my next gate just before they started boarding.
My little regional jets always look so tiny next to the bridge:
We boarded on time, then sat- turns out there are a couple passengers on incoming flights that we’re going to try to wait for. I mean, I get it- this is the last flight out and with all the flight disruptions, if waiting an extra 10-15 minutes means we can save some people from trying to squeeze onto another flight later, I guess that makes sense. But I am looking forward to getting home- we were slated to arrive around 11pm, now it’ll be closer to midnight.
And change of plan- turns out one plane is going to be taxiing for at least 30 more minutes and the other’s passengers have already been rebooked, so now we get to join the queue to depart, which is about half an hour long. There’s only one controller working tonight.
But we eventually got airborne AND I got a row to myself (after I asked if could move to the empty row behind me). I had just tipped over and was dozing off when they came on the overhead: there’s an issue with our left wing deicer. Not a problem in warm weather, or at lower latitudes, but it’s cold and borderline snowy back home; we can’t safely land there. So we turned back around and headed back to Chicago:
By the time we landed, I had several emails from United- they moved our gate a few times, and gave us a $15 meal voucher:
They also brought out bottled water and baskets of snacks, as none of us could get our vouchers to work. My phone was pretty much dead, so I found an outlet and settled in with my snack. Unfortunately, I managed to sit among some very chatty passengers- it’s going on midnight, I don’t really wanna talk, so I did the antisocial thing and popped in my earbuds, bopped my head a bit like I was rocking out to some tunes and ignored them.
Sorry, not sorry.
Fortunately, they were able to source us another plane and a little after 1am we were finally airborne and a short hour flight and half-hour drive later, I was home!
A long day, but I’m thankful none of my flights were cancelled and I made it home, safe and sound.
Plus, when I woke up later in the morning, there was a $50 voucher waiting in my email as a “Sorry your flight had lots of delays”. Unexpected, but a nice gesture.
I’m torn- I feel like I should go back when Cabrillo is open, when there are maybe rangers or marine biologists who can help point out more nudibranchs, but nudis here are tiny and hunting wasn’t very satisfying.
Still, it was warmer than home, I found some cool new-t0-me nudis and got to explore a new-to-me area. And that’s always a good time in my book.