Entry tags:
travel
Just spent most of a week at Shawm Camp, aka the Early Double Reed and Sackbut Workshop, at a church retreat center outside Bloomington, Indiana. This entailed flying to Indianapolis and renting a car. The car they gave us was all-electric, which was a novel experience for both of us. It seems to work well, although it doesn't seem to understand the idea of "coasting": when you take your foot off the accelerator, it slows down substantially and immediately.
Anyway, we stopped at Trader Joe's for snacks, then drove to Bloomington, where we visited the "Future Birthplace of Captain Janeway" statue, then went to the IU Music Library, which was inexplicably closed in the middle of the day on a Wednesday. Walked around town for a while, shared a pork-loin sandwich for dinner, and drove to the retreat center. Spent three full days playing shawms, plus a night at each end.
Sunday morning we packed the car, left camp around 10 AM, and spent some time trying to find an EV charging station (Google Maps was convinced that there's one in the middle of a derelict shopping mall). Eventually found one in-use, told the driver I'd never charged an EV before, and asked how long it takes. She was extremely helpful: she had about five minutes to go on her charge, and it would probably take us 20-30 minutes to get up to 80% (much longer to get to 100%, if we chose to do that), and we would need to download the EV Connect app to use this particular charging station. So I searched for EV Connect, found their app named EV Go, downloaded it, and went through their new-account registration process while waiting for the other driver to finish charging. Then it got to the "locate nearest charging station" screen and for some reason couldn't find the charging station I was standing three feet away from, or any other charging station within hundreds of miles. Used the QR code on the charging station, and it started downloading the app again, which seemed silly... until I realized that EV Connect is a different app from EV Go, and apparently a different company. With EV Connect I was able to identify the charging station, and eventually to plug in and start charging (after some difficulty getting the door of the charging port on the car open).
After half an hour charging, we drove to the parking lot near the Music Library, parked, walked to Mother Bear's for lunch (nummy Divine Swine pizza), walked to the Music Library (which was open this time), found several pieces we'd been looking for (the computerized catalogue is frustratingly available only with a University ID, but we knew we wanted the M2's, so we just found that aisle and scanned the shelves), then drove back to the Indianapolis airport. We checked in, a little less than two hours before our 4:00 flight, but it's a fairly small and intimate airport, and wasn't particularly crowded at the time, so we got through security and to our gate in plenty of time.
The flight was full, and at least a third of the passengers were from the "Elite Youth Basketball League", many of them well over six feet tall and trying to fold themselves into economy-class airline seats. But we took off on time without problems, landed on time without problems, and got to baggage claim (through the newly-rebuilt Terminal B, which is remarkably attractive and pleasant, and has won a bunch of international awards like "best new airport terminal in the world") without problems.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere retrieved our suitcases while I found the oversized-luggage area and waited for the heavy-duty, TSA-locked case that contained all our shawms. One golf bag came out in the oversized-luggage area, but nothing else seemed forthcoming, so I checked "Find My" for the tag we had attached to the instrument case. Sure enough, it was still at the Indianapolis airport. We talked to Baggage Services, who had no idea why it hadn't gotten on the same plane we did, but assured us it would be on the next flight to New York, and they would deliver it to the house the next day. shalmestere found that unsatisfactory, and asked whether they would call us as soon as it arrived so we could come and get it. They said "sure", and marked it "Hold For Pickup", while we found the taxi stand and loaded our remaining bags into a taxi. I got in, started telling the driver our address, and he started moving before shalmestere had finished getting into the car (the door was still open!), so she cussed him out for a moment, got into her seat, and we rode the rest of the way home uneventfully.
The house was still standing. Some flowers in the front yard had finished blooming while others had started (with three rose bushes in the latter category), and after we'd spent so much of the previous few weeks pulling up maple seedlings, there were now a number of oak seedlings. So we pulled weeds for a few minutes and collapsed on the couch to watch the last two episodes of "Young Sheldon".
Around 8:30 I checked "Find My", and it said the instrument case was "last seen near Indianapolis Airport", but at 6:30, so I figured it was in transit. Fifteen minutes later "Find My" said it was at La Guardia, so we got into the car to retrieve it.shalmestere went into the baggage claim area while I stayed with the car, jockeying through a dense, viscous mass of other cars waiting to pick people up, she came out with the case before I'd managed to travel fifty feet, and we got back to the house fairly efficiently. The instrument case had been opened for inspection, but nothing seemed missing or damaged, so we put away instruments and dirty laundry and went to bed. Never did get a phone call from the airline to tell us our bag had arrived, but it all turned out in the end.
Anyway, we stopped at Trader Joe's for snacks, then drove to Bloomington, where we visited the "Future Birthplace of Captain Janeway" statue, then went to the IU Music Library, which was inexplicably closed in the middle of the day on a Wednesday. Walked around town for a while, shared a pork-loin sandwich for dinner, and drove to the retreat center. Spent three full days playing shawms, plus a night at each end.
Sunday morning we packed the car, left camp around 10 AM, and spent some time trying to find an EV charging station (Google Maps was convinced that there's one in the middle of a derelict shopping mall). Eventually found one in-use, told the driver I'd never charged an EV before, and asked how long it takes. She was extremely helpful: she had about five minutes to go on her charge, and it would probably take us 20-30 minutes to get up to 80% (much longer to get to 100%, if we chose to do that), and we would need to download the EV Connect app to use this particular charging station. So I searched for EV Connect, found their app named EV Go, downloaded it, and went through their new-account registration process while waiting for the other driver to finish charging. Then it got to the "locate nearest charging station" screen and for some reason couldn't find the charging station I was standing three feet away from, or any other charging station within hundreds of miles. Used the QR code on the charging station, and it started downloading the app again, which seemed silly... until I realized that EV Connect is a different app from EV Go, and apparently a different company. With EV Connect I was able to identify the charging station, and eventually to plug in and start charging (after some difficulty getting the door of the charging port on the car open).
After half an hour charging, we drove to the parking lot near the Music Library, parked, walked to Mother Bear's for lunch (nummy Divine Swine pizza), walked to the Music Library (which was open this time), found several pieces we'd been looking for (the computerized catalogue is frustratingly available only with a University ID, but we knew we wanted the M2's, so we just found that aisle and scanned the shelves), then drove back to the Indianapolis airport. We checked in, a little less than two hours before our 4:00 flight, but it's a fairly small and intimate airport, and wasn't particularly crowded at the time, so we got through security and to our gate in plenty of time.
The flight was full, and at least a third of the passengers were from the "Elite Youth Basketball League", many of them well over six feet tall and trying to fold themselves into economy-class airline seats. But we took off on time without problems, landed on time without problems, and got to baggage claim (through the newly-rebuilt Terminal B, which is remarkably attractive and pleasant, and has won a bunch of international awards like "best new airport terminal in the world") without problems.
shalmestere retrieved our suitcases while I found the oversized-luggage area and waited for the heavy-duty, TSA-locked case that contained all our shawms. One golf bag came out in the oversized-luggage area, but nothing else seemed forthcoming, so I checked "Find My" for the tag we had attached to the instrument case. Sure enough, it was still at the Indianapolis airport. We talked to Baggage Services, who had no idea why it hadn't gotten on the same plane we did, but assured us it would be on the next flight to New York, and they would deliver it to the house the next day. shalmestere found that unsatisfactory, and asked whether they would call us as soon as it arrived so we could come and get it. They said "sure", and marked it "Hold For Pickup", while we found the taxi stand and loaded our remaining bags into a taxi. I got in, started telling the driver our address, and he started moving before shalmestere had finished getting into the car (the door was still open!), so she cussed him out for a moment, got into her seat, and we rode the rest of the way home uneventfully.The house was still standing. Some flowers in the front yard had finished blooming while others had started (with three rose bushes in the latter category), and after we'd spent so much of the previous few weeks pulling up maple seedlings, there were now a number of oak seedlings. So we pulled weeds for a few minutes and collapsed on the couch to watch the last two episodes of "Young Sheldon".
Around 8:30 I checked "Find My", and it said the instrument case was "last seen near Indianapolis Airport", but at 6:30, so I figured it was in transit. Fifteen minutes later "Find My" said it was at La Guardia, so we got into the car to retrieve it.
shalmestere went into the baggage claim area while I stayed with the car, jockeying through a dense, viscous mass of other cars waiting to pick people up, she came out with the case before I'd managed to travel fifty feet, and we got back to the house fairly efficiently. The instrument case had been opened for inspection, but nothing seemed missing or damaged, so we put away instruments and dirty laundry and went to bed. Never did get a phone call from the airline to tell us our bag had arrived, but it all turned out in the end.