SDA Travel Day

Country Club Plaza

I got up early and my husband took me to the Flyaway bus, which goes from Van Nuys to LAX. If I’m traveling alone, its become my favorite way to get to the airport. I decided to fly out of LAX because Southwest has a direct flight to Kansas City from there, and no direct flights from Burbank. I’ve gotten tired of changing planes in the middle of what would otherwise be a three hour flight. I’ve gotten tired of changing planes in Phoenix.

Bee had a ticket on the same flight, so I expected to see her at the gate. After I got through the obstacle course that is the security screening in LAX’s Terminal 1, I went to Starbucks to get my first coffee of the day. Coming out of Starbucks, I ran into Bee. The flight was smooth and uneventful. We took off under cloudy skies in LA and landed under cloudy skies in Kansas City.

After we checked in to the hotel and got settled in our room, we walked over to KCAI to check in to the conference. From our room we called Smadar and Chetna, and got a hold of them at the rental car agency, ready to pick up their car. By the time We found the on-campus coffee house and sat down to go over the schedule, Smadar and Chetna called from their hotel room. We all went out for dinner at Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbeque in Country Club plaza. I had one of my favorite foods in the world, baby back ribs. Bee had some lamb ribs - a dish none of us had ever heard of before -and they were amazingly wonderful. I had french fries and baked beans as my sides and they were both excellent also.

After dinner there we just went back to the room. There were some talks in the campus auditorium by the workshop instructors, but we skepped those. We were all very tired from a long travel day, and just tried to stay up past 8:00 pm Pacific time before going to sleep.