Doris took me to the airport today for my flight
to Cupertino. Problem: I didn't have a
visa. Rather naively, I had assumed that I wouldn't need one. Today was a Sunday, so there
was nothing to be done until tomorrow.
What should I do with the day? Doris was gone, and I was happy enough about that. I would
have liked to see Yvonne, but she had gone
to Heilbronn to visit her friends Gabi
and Gerd Reichert. Called them up, got the address, called John Hughes and asked him for
the car I had lent him, and then off to Heilbronn, getting some acquaintance with the
Reicherts' horses in the process. Back to Frankfurt in the evening, and spent the night
with Yvonne.
Up early in the morning and to the US Embassy in Frankfurt. I think it was the first
diplomatic mission I have ever seen guarded by soldiers. Explained my problem and got a
visa very quickly—looking back, surprisingly quickly in view of how the US authorities act
nowadays. Off to the airport before midday and discovered the next flight going to the USA
was a Pan Am flight
to New York, with ongoing connection
to San Francisco. Off to have my
ticket changed, and to my pleasure discovered that the Lufthansa fare class J meant business class.
In New York in mid-afternoon, about the same local time when as I left Frankfurt. What a
mess JFK
is! Discovered that I could join the frequent flyer club for not too much money, so in
anticipation of lots of benefits, did that. On to San Francisco, where I arrived at about
21:00 (06:00 the following morning back in Frankfurt), and then down to Tandem's “Fremont and Mary” facility to pick up a key for the flat
I was to stay in.
Down then to the flat in San Jose, and found
evidence that somebody had already moved in there. Damn! That was the last thing I needed.
Headed off looking for a hotel, not an easy thing to find
in Silicon Valley, and finally
ended up via a roundabout method shortly before midnight at a hotel at San Jose airport.
What a day!
Into the Tandem facility on the corner of Fremont
and Mary Avenues in Sunnyvale today to belatedly start my course. Discovered the reason why the bedroom
was occupied: it's a double flat, and I had chosen the wrong bedroom. All is well.
Made friends with a colleague from SSG Cupertino, Sue Kleiman, and spent a fair
amount of time with her. Ended up going to Santa Cruz for dinner, where
I was horrified by the queue waiting to get in. I suggested going elsewhere, and Sue had to
explain to me that queues for restaurants are normal for the USA.
After class, discussing some assignments with Sue and one of the assistants. Huh? There
are files in my directory, $CLASS.GREG, that shouldn't have been there, and they had
been modified in the last few minutes. Assistant looked at the controlling terminal and
said “that's over there”, pointing to where a student was sitting. He was “Black” (with a
capital B, it seems), and assistant looked daggers. I called over “Hey, Greg, are you
getting on OK?". He turned around, “Yes, thanks”. He was in a beginner's course, and
hadn't noticed the mistake that the course organizers had made: they had given us both the
same user ID.
But wait, there's more! After getting back to the flat and finally getting some sleep, the
phone rang. An unknown American woman's voice. “Is that you, Greg?”. “Yes”. “Yes”. The
second “Yes” wasn't from me, but from Greg (Moore), the same bloke we had seen earlier in
the evening. He's from Austin,
TX.
Sue Kleiman and I have spent lots of time together, but today she had a “date” with somebody
that she had made before she and I met. I was on my own, but somehow survived.
Phone call from Sue Kleiman early in the morning. Her “date” yesterday hadn't been quite
what she expected. After leaving the restaurant, he saw a 1956 Chevrolet. “Hey, I wonder if he locked
it up properly. These things have a guide for the keys that turns with the key, and when
you take out the key, you need to make sure that the guide locks too; otherwise you can
start the car without the key”. Got into the car. Started it. Drove off.
Sue was infuriated. I forget what she said about the rest of the evening, if there was one,
but somehow she wanted to get the car back to its rightful owner, apparently without
implicating the thief. So off we set to (I think) Santa Cruz again. Found the car.
Almost no petrol in it, so we drove it to the nearest petrol station and put a gallon or so
into it. Tried to drive off, but it wouldn't start. Damn! What an end to an altrustic
gesture!
Somehow found the name and phone number of the owner, and called them up from a roadside
call box. Owner was not happy, tried to shoot the messenger over the phone. I explained
that I was trying to get the car back to him, not steal it, but he didn't cool down. So I
told him where it was and that he could pick it up.
Then I hung up, of course. And immediately the phone rang. “Please put 14¢ into the box”.
Another surprising thing: AT&T apparently had issues with calculating the cost of a coin phone call, and it was
relatively normal for this sort of thing to happen. I suspected that it was also relatively
normal for what I did to happen: ignore it.
