Day 1: Long Beach
Thursday, March 6, 2025

Internet Speed: 9259 Kbps down, 9666 Kbps up, NordVPN on
Location at End of Day

Finally, we’re on our way!  We packed yesterday (Wednesday) and are trying some new things this trip, including:  new USB fans for the bedroom side tables; new Kylmit inflatable mats for the bad (in case our mattress is really awful and/or we can’t get a mattress pad from our stateroom attendant; magnets for the shower curtain; and compression packing cubes.  With the mattress pads still boxed, it really ruled out taking our carry-on bags, so we both ended up with full-sized suitcases.   Even w/o the mattress pads we probably would have been hard-pressed to fit into the smaller cases, however.  As a dress rehearsal for our long UK+TA in August this is helping to give us confidence that we’ll be OK with 2 full-size cases plus our travel backpack for that trip.

The compression packing cubes certainly make for easier packing.  I’m not certain whether or not they saved significant space – but the ability to move around a bunch of rectangles without accidentally unfolding/unrolling already-packed stuff in order to optimize how the suitcase is loaded was really nice.  I think I’m a fan.

Our trip started later in the day than usual for a domestic trip.  We chose to arrive in Long Beach in the late afternoon rather than early afternoon.  Our thought was to land, get to the hotel, walk somewhere for dinner (probably in the LBX Mall), and end the day.  As such, our flight didn’t leave San Jose until 3:30P, so we left the house around 12:30P and stopped to have lunch at Popeye’s before dropping our car off at Spring Park Indoor Garage just after 1PM.  We first tried Spring Park at Thanksgiving, when we’d flown to Denver for family dinner.  It was a new experience and turned out to be so much better than our experience with AM Airport Parking over on Martin Ave.  AM was “meh” in that it was cramped, uncovered, outdoor parking and the shuttle always took at least 15 minutes to arrive after landing back at SJC.  At Spring Park we got indoor self-parking, a very quick shuttle trip, and shuttle pickup was just a few minutes of waiting upon our return.   After a short wait for the parking shuttle to load up, we were in the terminal by about 1:15P at at the gate by 1:30P. 

We were going out of gate 25, which is one of the 4 gates just at the front of Terminal A, so no long walks – nice.  I stopped to fill up our water bottles and then we grabbed a couple of seats at the gate and passed time reading and playing on our tablets.  Boarding started around 3:00P, as expected.  I’d checked into the flight within seconds of it opening up and we were in boarding group A (A56, A56), so we had lots of choices for a pair of seats.  We tried our normal strategy of E at the window and me at the aisle, with an empty seat between us, in hopes that no one would occupy the middle.  If someone does target our row then I move to the middle so E and I are next to each other…but sometimes we end up having the row to ourselves - and that was the case this time.

The flight from SJC to LGB is quick – just 55 minutes in the air.  As quickly as the crew passed out snacks and drinks they were snatching them up again so they could sit down for landing.  LGB is really a throwback kind of place.  Feels very 1958, featuring ramps rather than jetways, art deco design, and an open palm tree court between the ramp area and baggage claim.  It does run pretty efficiently, however, as our luggage was off the plane with about 10 minutes.  When deplaning, they rolled ramps up to both the front and back doors of the plane.  We were essentially dead center – the rows just in front of us and behind us emptied at the same time, and I was the last passenger (save one) to plane.  As I came up to the front of the plane the purser asked me to tell someone that they needed one wheelchair on the plane, which I dutifully told to some dude lounging around outside the plane.  He asked if I was the last passenger off and I confirmed that was the case, so I assumed he then got a wheelchair.

As soon as we got our bags I called the hotel and in less than 10 minutes their shuttle arrived.  The hotel was just 3 stop lights and about 7 minutes away, so we were at the hotel in no time at all.  Unusually, it was gold (about 50 degrees) with a very light drizzle when we arrived.

At the hotel, following check-in, we decided that we’d take our chances that our fleeces and travel umbrellas would be good enough to allow us to walk over to The Hangar at LGX, which is a food court that we could see from our 5^th floor window.  Couldn’t have been more than 0.2 miles away.  The walk was easy.  Having just had Popeye's at lunch it seemed like the soul food place I had been eye-balling during the planning stages would be redundant tonight.   I had a sandwich from Ike’s – disappointing, as usual – while Eileen had some kind of pot roast sandwich from another place.  It was crowded but we lucked into a table.  Upon return to the hotel we grabbed some snacks from the small hotel shop and came back to the room to read and watch TV.