All Good Things Must Come to an End

And so they did. Fantastically and with enormous flair and grit.

We intended to leave at 11:00 and had no trouble at all in the pursuit of this goal. We had our free breakfast, enjoyed the final moment of luxury in our room, took some last pictures and headed downstairs to checkout.

The woman at the counter waived us over with a smile and took our outstretched room and mini-bar keys. With somewhat wide eyes, she merrily informed us that our "room fee and taxes [had] already been looked after" and that we were free to go. (This, of course, is because we purchased the room through hotels.com and it was a done deal before we walked in, but none-the-less, it was somewhat amusing to be treated as though we were some sort of mysterious VIPs who had our charges covered by an anonymous patron.)

Off to the car and back to the border crossing 50km east of Vancouver, because we had heard that it was a much better crossing. We laughed again at the sign welcoming us to Vancouver that says "Welcome to Vancouver: A Nuclear Weapons Free Zone." That is awesome, thanks for letting us know. In 40 minutes we were across and only slightly concerned about the time it would take to get from there to the airport in Seattle.

That is until we slammed on the breaks for the dead stopped traffic. Dead stopped. So stopped that people who had been there for sometime were already out of their cars, walking between the windows of other cars and making grand predictions and grim explanations as to why the entire southbound freeway was at a standstill. Oh, to have a Garmin. Had we had a Garmin, we could have pressed "Detour" and magically been whisked away to the perfect and hidden sub-universe just outside of the conscious realm of the average man, but we did not.

After sitting for almost an hour, I called the airport and spoke with four different people until I was able to book an alternate flight leaving tomorrow when dawn is thinking about what to have for breakfast. With great frustration and grim determination, we followed a line of traffic that had decided to go off the on ramp and struggle onto a back road that had no real clear direction or outlet. Alas, Garmin would have told me what we eventually figured out, which is that we could circumnavigate all the trouble, get back onto the freeway, and, in the process, enjoy the view and calm demeanor of a beautiful lake in Northern Washington all in the matter of minutes. Curse you, Garmin! I am ruined now for lack of directionality from the sky. It feels something like navigating by the stars, but instead using geosynchronous satellites with the vision of primitive gods and the power of a pantheon of brilliant circuitry and line of sight navigation. Detour indeed.

At this point we decided to try and find a hotel rather than sleeping it off at the airport. And that would bring us to the Days Inn, Sea-Tac. Ah. It smells slightly like an ill-vented closet. The bed is not so soft. The view not so grand. And, worst of all, it is not my home in San Diego, where I intended to be sleeping tonight. Perhaps we pushed our luck just a little too far this time. Here's hoping the alarm gets us onto the plane this time around.