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June 23, 2008
A Few Random Notes From Our Quickie Weekend Trip To Sun Valley
Matt and Kari tied the knot this weekend, so Elaine and I got to fly to Sun Valley, Idaho to see them say "I do". A few notes from the trip:
- Neither of us had ever been to Sun Valley, and we were plenty excited to make the journey and see the place. You have two choices if you're flying from Seattle - go direct, or fly to Boise and drive (which adds about two hours). Seattle-Boise flights are a bit cheaper and quite a bit more frequent; Seattle-Sun Valley flights run just once a day. We elect to pay a bit more for the convenience, and fly direct.
- From the "Is Our Children Learning?" department: the Starbucks in SeaTac's main concourse was selling "Raisen Scones." Really.
- I'm one of those obnoxious people who insists on getting to the airport two hours ahead of the flight, which means, invariably, that there's plenty of time to kill once we clear security. As it happens, our gate was directly across from one of those airport massage bars, and, on a whim, I decided to try it.
- The place sells quick-hit massages (a "single shot" is 15 minutes; "double shot" is 30, and so on), but they also sell a 10-minute foot massage for $18, which pretty much sealed the deal. After signing in (and waiting a bit), they parked me in a super-comfy reclining chair, put a hot pillow around the back of my neck, rotated the chair so my back was parallel to the floor (and, thus, my feet were popped up), put a blackout cover over my eyes, and went to work.
- 10 minutes is not near enough time. And, truth be told, the massage was good enough that I completely forgot that I was in an airport.
- For some reason, I always forget that Horizon Airlines offers complimentary beer and wine on their flights. While this may speak to early Alzheimer's (or, perhaps, too much overall beer and wine consumption), it does allow me to experience that, "I love this airline!" feeling on a recurring basis. (Hooray for Horizon!)
- Our landing was bumpy - like, sparks-shoot-off-the-landing-gear-and-smoke-pours-off-the-wheels bumpy. Elaine and I are very, very glad once we're on the ground.
- Sun Valley, like a lot of Idaho, is gorgeous. Rolling green hills, dotted with trees and brush; wide-open expanses of blue sky; fast-moving, wide rivers. It all seems to go on forever.
- The Hertz people were terrific to work with; they gave us a brand-new (507 miles!) Subaru Outback to tool around in for the weekend. I'd never driven an Outback before, but wouldn't mind doing it again - it's peppy, roomy, very responsive. I don't know what I was expecting, but after renting that gawd-awful PT Cruiser in San Francisco in '06, I'm pretty much prepared for a kick in the shins at the rental counter.
- The Sun Valley airport is in Hailey, ID; "Sun Valley" is actually Ketchum, ID. They're about 12 miles from one another.
- We stayed at the Sun Valley Lodge, which is a very nice hotel. Friendly people, clean rooms, free parking. It's not exactly our style (it caters to the polo shirt and blue blazer crowd), but we really liked it.
- The Science Channel is running a hypnotic show called "How It's Made", which is crack for geeks. We caught one show about how to make golf balls, parking meters and cabinet handles - unbelievably cool. What makes the show work is learning both the anatomy of how things work (e.g., golf balls have rubber cores, cabinet handles start as zinc) as well as seeing the wicked industrial machinery, robotics, and processes that are responsible for synthesizing raw materials into something you see at Home Depot. So cool.
- There's a great little 1-mile-long trail from the Sun Valley Lodge that takes you to downtown Ketchum. On a nice, sunny day (of which Idaho seems to have in near-infinite supply), it's a terrific way to spend part of your morning.
- Don't miss the "Bowl of Soul" at Java on Fourth.
- For some reason, every time I put on a suit, I feel, at some vague level, like a 12-year-old playing in his dad's closet. I never can quite get used to suits.
- Kari and Matt could not have picked a better spot for their wedding - the setting was spectacular.
- Given that I met Matt in business school, the wedding was a bit of a UW MBA Class of '05 reunion. Chris Meyer and I wound up reflecting that this was, jointly, our fifth MBA wedding since graduation. How time flies.
- Getting out of Sun Valley got a little ... touchy. Turns out that Horizon oversold the Saturday flight to Seattle (as airlines are wont to do), and needed people to volunteer to get bumped. Problem is - this was the only flight that day, so nobody wanted to budge. Compounding the problem was that the carrot they were dangling - a free roundtrip ticket - wasn't very tasty (since you'd need to arrange a hotel stay, that pretty much cancelled the benefit). Unsurprisingly, nobody took the offer. And, unsurprisingly, the unlucky folks who got mandatorily bumped (a couple of poor Australian guys) were pissed off about it.
- (Note to self: I never, ever, ever, ever want to work at an airline counter.)
- The flight home was so bumpy that they had to stop the beverage service three times. I gave a silent prayer when we touched down - smoothly - in Seattle.
Damn, it's good to be home.
Posted by Gavin Shearer at June 23, 2008 8:08 AM. Posted to Travel.
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Yuck. Our Boise flight left in the middle of a crazy wind-storm. They didn't get up to do beverage service at all! No free booze for us... :(
Posted by: Marnie at June 23, 2008 8:50 PM
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