2021 Bellingham Day 4: Moving Day!

 Moving day.  E and I had breakfast at the hotel and checked ourselves out around 9AM and drove over to the UHaul rental place.  As we pulled in, noticed that they had a commercial van available for rent at the same $19.95 rate as the pickup, and since the day was a little bit wet (it had rained in the early morning) I made a snap decision to rent that instead of the pickup.  Turned out to be the PERFECT vehicle for us.  The rental desk made the change in just a couple of minutes and I drove the van over to Robert and Ashley’s apartment where we began to load it up.  Only took about a ½ dozen trips up and down the stairs before we were ready to make the short trip over to the new place.

Managed to snag a parking meter spot on the street about 50’ from the door to the new place so we proceeded to start unloading and taking stuff up to the new apartment.  Unlike Robert’s description and VERY unlike the drawing he’d made from memory, the apartment was NOT the tiny matchbox we had been dreading we’d find.  Instead, it was a pretty expansive studio, with lot of space in the main room for bed, shelving, desk, and (eventually) chair or 2 seat sofa.  The kitchen was small, but not oppressively so.  We’d eventually select and have a counter-height table with two stools shipped up to Robert so he’s have both more work area as well as a place to eat his meals.

After unloading everything we returned the van (surprising the UHaul folks with how quickly we’d finished) and then all four of us went and grabbed food at a nearby Wendy’s before dropping Robert off and making our exit around 2PM to head to Seattle.  After we’d gone about 10-12 miles, Robert called – turned out we’d accidentally left our backpack of electronics at his place!  Fortunately, we had enough time to turn around and head back into Bellingham so Andrew could scurry up to the apartment and retrieve our stuff.  That taken care of, we once again set out to the airport.

Traffic was very light until we got to about 11 miles north of Seattle, at which point the next 15 miles to the airport took us about an hour.  We pulled off a couple of exits early, following guidance from E, who’d made this trip before, so we could approach the rental return garage by way of a gas station to refill the tank before we finally pulled back into the Budget return entrance of the airport.  As usual, drop-off was painless and we were headed toward the shuttle buses to get to the terminal.

We arrived about 1.5 hours before boarding time, giving us ample time to clear security and purchase some food which we consumed waiting at the gate.  The return flight was uneventful – the upgraded seats in Economy Plus on Delta was once again a nice thing.  Back at the SJC airport, we called the parking folks for pickup and ended up waiting about 10-12 minutes for their arrival.  There were also two large families who got picked up at the other terminal after we’d gotten on, so we had a full house by the time we were heading to the offsite location.  Unfortunately, in the confusion of changing our dates I’d failed to update the parking dates.  As a result, our pre-paid reservation included the day BEFORE we flew and did NOT include the day we came back, so I ended up having to pay for an additional day at non-discounted prices.  Annoying, but not fatal.  With that payment made we loaded up in our car and drove home.

Mission accomplished!

BTW: Eagle-eyed readers might have noted that today's entry is labeled as "Day 4"...but is time-stamped two days later than Day 3's entry.  Apparently, somewhere along the way I failed to record any details about one of the day of our trip!  I know there's a missing day as I still had emails from Delta with all our flight info, so I know our trip happened 8/13/21 to 8/17/21.  I didn't get around to transcribing and posting this from Word to the blog until Aug 2026 (i.e. five years post-trip), so the memories are long since faded.  The mystery day will remain a mystery.

 

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2021 Bellingham Day 3: Relaxation

The third day dawned a bit clearer, with a tiny bit of faint blue in the sky trying to break through the smoke.  The temperature for the day also is predicted to be a bit cooler – somewhere in the high 70’s/low 80’s.  Another quick breakfast for us today, skipping the rubbery-looking “omelets” and sticking again to oatmeal for D, English muffin and yogurt for E.  Bacon was on the menu today so that was a plus.  Grabbed a Seattle Times and headed back to the room for a few hours while we waited for the kids to rise.  The Times is hardly a Great Newspaper – but a comparison between it and the SJ Mercury just reinforces how far the Merc has fallen from its former heights.  Sigh.

Lunch was at Brothers Bus Bistro, which is, indeed, a kitchen inside an old bus that is parked next to a downtown brewery.  As the only seating was in the beer garden, we couldn’t stay and eat since everyone had to be 21+, so we got stuff to go and took it back to Robert and Ashley’s apartment.  Following the meal it was time to hit Fred Meyer and Target to pickup various new apartment necessities for Robert, after which we again dropped the boys off and went back to relax (and nap) at the hotel.

We did our big fancy dinner tonight at a place called Keenan’s at the Pier.  Ashley’s friend Rosalee, a recent grad of Bellingham Technical College’s culinary program, was interning there as part of the school’s job training program.  She’s obviously done well as Keenan’s apparently just extended her a full- time offer.  She popped out of the kitchen soon after we sat down to say hi (and actually finished her shift during our appetizer course).

Dinner was actually really good.  It’s a seafood place so we had a variety of cioppinos, salmons, etc. and all enjoyed ourselves.  For dessert, in addition to a crème Brule we also shared the special Tiramasu – which happened to be Rosalee’s creation.  Being espresso-based it wasn’t really in our wheelhouse so hard to say whether it was good or not.  Of course, this didn’t detract from our overall enjoyment.  On our way back to the car we stopped to grab a quick family snapshot and then got everyone to their respective resting places.

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2021 Bellingham Day 2: Campus Visit, Lunch Favorite, and Family Dinner

We got up around 8:30A and got showered before heading down to have the expected barely edible breakfast.  Despite the pandemic they’re still running their normal self-service buffet with the typical items.  It seems like folks in Washington are a bit more relaxed in masking than we're used to.  We don’t get into the elevator without ours, and we kept ours on while serving ourselves food, removing them only to eat.  However, most of those entering the buffet area were sans mask the whole time.  At least WA’s governor has been as pro-mask as we’re used to, so we’re hopeful that most residents are fully vaxxed.

After breakfast we returned to our room as we’d agreed with the boys that they’d contact us when they were awake and ready to (perhaps) tour the WWU campus.  We were expecting to hear from them around noontime, so I took advantage of the lull to change our Uhaul reservation from a truck to a pickup.  Had a quick look at what Robert needs to move and the pickup + car should be more than adequate.  Also used the morning time to catch up on these notes.

At noon, still not having heard from the boys, E sent a message and discovered Robert was up and about, but Andrew and Ashley’s status was unknown.  We sent word that we’d come over around 12:45 and we’d head out for a campus walk and lunch.  The walk was first.  There were a couple of large groups in sight when we started, leading Ashley and Robert to theorize that the Summer Start sessions might be underway.  We enjoyed a leisurely stroll through central campus before returning to the car.  Sadly, with the gray, smoky skies the campus didn’t show as well as might be hoped, so Andrew didn’t experience the environment at its best.  It wouldn’t be a shock if this imperfect introduction to the campus means that it is forever excluded from his list of future college options.

We then headed downtown to Robert’s favorite food spot – a small shop serving Russian meat and/or potato dumplings.  That’s it.  This is apparently a Bellingham institution.  In many ways, Robert likened it to Taco Bravo (although clearly much cleaner and serving “real” food rather than greasy tacos).  The curry-sprinkled dumplings are served with a small piece of quite good rye bread, (optional) cilantro, sour cream, and hot sauce.  Quite tasty – and also surprisingly dense.  Easy to stuff oneself full!

We drove back in such a way as to pass the outside of Robert’s soon-to-be apartment before making a quick stop at the place where we’re renting the Uhaul pickup (a self-storage place) in order to pickup a few packing boxes and tape before returning to their apartment.  A list of items to be acquired at Fred Meyer was assembled, than E and I left to head back to the hotel while Robert and Andrew were to tackle quick(?) disassembly of Robert’s desk.

We gathered again for dinner, which this evening was a meal at Skylark’s Hidden Café in the Fairhaven district.  The kids hadn’t been there, so this was new for everyone.  We had a nice time, although there was nothing particularly special about the meal.  Due to kitchen timing problems our dinners came out alongside our appetizers, which was a bit disappointing.  Eating outside was quite lovely, however.  After-dinner we walked about a block away to a favorite Gelato spot of Robert and Ashley and gorged ourselves on ENORMOUS double scoops of tasty dessert.  We dropped the kids back at the apartment around 9P and headed back to our hotel for the night.

And now a digression, to get to the bottom of something really important.  Let’s talk toilet seats.  The hotel had high-tech toilet seats, complete with heaters, spraying and oscillating water, and blow dryers.  I’ve certainly seen these online before, but had never experienced one before first-hand…so to say.  And now that I’ve tried it?  No.  Just no.  There are some things that technology isn’t meant to assist (or should that be ass-ist?) and toilet hygiene is high on the list of things I don’t need a machine doing.

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2021 Bellingham Day 1: A Plane, No Trains, and One Automobile

Actually, let’s talk about the day before Day 1, in which Delta Delivers.  Again.  Yes, another Delta snafu.  Twenty-four hours prior to our flight I went online to check us in and Delta’s website told me that it couldn’t do it.  Something about “not having an eTicket”.  The only thing the website suggested is that we call Delta.  Awesome.  So, like an idiot I did.

Their automated phone system starts with the news – delivered optimistically – that “call waits times are averaging under two (that’s right: TWO) hours.”  Shit.  So, having no brains I hang on.  After an hour, I have to leave because I’m scheduled to meet two old HS buddies for lunch in Menlo Park, so I park the handset next to Eileen and she’s on duty.  After I leave she waits another 90 minutes before an agent FINALLY answers.

The agent’s helpful response?  I can’t help with that – they’ll have to take care of it at the airport.  Literally, the only thing that the agent can do is (repeatedly) tell E that “your reservations match your itinerary”, a phrase that is as obtuse and it is unhelpful.  Can’t explain what is wrong, can’t explain how it will be solved…can barely validate that the problem IS solvable  E texts me that this is 2.5 hours of life we’ll never get back.  Sigh.

So, anyway, back to Day 1.  We finish prepping the house – including telling our NEW Nest thermostat that we’re going to be “Away” and hit the road for some donuts.  (It’s the law.)  We drop our car off with AM Parking, a new-to-us offsite place just down the street from Lyric’s old warehouse on Martin Ave.  The shuttle arrives just as we reach the waiting spot so we’re at the airport in no time.  Simple.

Because we expected at least some challenges with check-in we’d given ourselves about 15 minutes more at the airport than our original plan.  When we reached the ticketing agent she punched in some numbers and had our boarding  passes printed up in about 60 seconds, however.  She said that what apparently happened is that their ticketing system managed to get confused by the combination of date change and cabin class change that was a result of our rescheduling.  But clearly this kind of confusion is something that they deal with at the airport constantly.  I think the take-away is never again to stress about an automated check-in issue.  Just let them sort it out at the airport.

Of course, us being us meant that we were – as usual – at the airport two hours before our flight left so we would have to cool our heels in the terminal.  We breezed (almost) through Security.  We had Pre-TSA and no line to get our IDs checked, although they ended up hand searching our backpack which, admittedly, looked like a tangle of wire and explosives under X-ray.  They even checked E’s bag of trail mix for explosives!  Having satisfied themselves that we weren’t terrorists, we were passed through and took up residence at our gate until boarding.

The flight itself was good.  The seats had the advertised leg room and were fine.  Snacks were small (3-4 oz) cans of juice or soda from a reduced menu.  For example, they weren’t stocking my usual standby of apple juice.  We also had a choice of pretzels or biscotti.  The weather over Seattle was a combo of light overcast and smoke from fires in BC.

Upon landing we made our way downstairs and over to the Rental Car Shuttle area where we were surprised to find a very long line snaking up and down the sidewalk waiting for the buses to arrive.  Also nearby was a gang of firefighters, here to assist in fighting the raging wildfires.  They were waiting for their pickup to arrive.  Buses were arriving every 5 minutes or so, and it took us about 20 minutes of waiting before we finally reached the front of the line and got taken to the Rental Car Facility.  At the RCF there was, of course, another long line of folks at the Budget counter.  However, we took a chance and went downstairs to the FastBreak counter.  I’d never done this before, and I hadn’t specifically checked off the boxes when I did the online rental saying I wanted FastBreak service so I wasn’t sure if this would work.  I approached the guy at the FastBreak counter and he punched in some stuff and then said “did you look over there <pointing to a board just to my right>?”  “Over there” were a series of rental folders with different names on them….including ours!  So we DID have a FastBreak reservation, and our car was gassed up and ready to go!  SWEET! This probably saved us 30 minutes of standing in line.  

Our car was a new Ford Fusion.  Took a few minutes to figure out where all the controls were and get Andrew’s phone synced to it so he could stream Spotify for our trip since my phone was being used for Waze, but we were soon on our way out of the airport and heading toward Bellingham.  Traffic was really bad – just an endless series of traffic jams for close to 2/3 of the trip.  What should have been about a 2 hour trip took just over 2.5 hours (including a very short detour off the freeway to grab some Burger King about 2:15P) and we finally pulled into Robert’s apartment around 4PM.  After meeting Ashley and spending about 15 minutes at the apartment, we left Andrew there while E and I went over and checked into the Holiday Inn Express and got settled.

We returned to pick everyone up for dinner and went downtown to D’Anna’s Italian (or something like that).  This had been on my short-list of interesting looking restaurants and Ashley mentioned it was her favorite place downtown, so seemed like a good choice.   Found street parked just across from the front door and got seated on their very nice and new outdoor patio by one of the many seriously-tattooed staff members.  Body art is apparently a requirement to work there.  Dinner was quite good.  We passed around calamari and home ravioli sampler appetizers before settling into extremely generous dinner portions.  We dropped the kids back at their apartment with a ton of leftovers and then went back to the hotel to relax.

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2021 Bellingham - A Working Vacation

Background

Welcome to the Vacation That Wasn’t.

Let me explain.

In 2020, the world went to hell as the global COVID19 pandemic set in.  Traveling anywhere for frivolous reasons – like taking vacation – became impossible to justify.  So we stopped trying.  Our annual trip with friends to Bodega?  Cancelled.  Thoughts of flying up to see Robert in Bellingham?  A non-starter.  A cruise?  *snort*  And so the entire year passed with us sitting at home, leaving the house once per week to go to the grocery store.

There was one break – at Christmas, Robert did fly down to see us for a few weeks.  We had gone the entire year apart from each other, as he’d previously been home for New Years 2019/2020…but no summer visit, no Thanksgiving visit….just more Zoom calls.  But even with his trip home in Dec 2020 there was nervousness, as COVID vaccines hadn’t yet debuted and risk, therefore, existed as he journeyed to a crowded airport and a flight in enclosed spaces.  Thankfully, his flight was lightly populated, and everyone was masked, so nothing happened (phew!)  

Then 2021 dawned and the promise of vaccination meant that we could once again consider travel.  Except the problem with a pandemic is that while vaccinations certainly reduced the risk of a horrible death, it didn’t eliminate the risk of contracting a manageable but still unwanted case of COVID.  So travel still came with an elevated chance of walking into bad environments.  Travel to exotic locations for sight-seeing still seemed to be out for 2021, although more controlled environments seemed doable.  Therefore, we rescheduled our Bodega trip for Oct 2021 (two months away at time of this writing) as we’d be with our small circle of trusted friends at a house occupied by only us.

But we still wanted to see Robert.  Another 8 months apart had us Jones-ing to spend some time with him.  “Why don’t we fly up to see him over the summer, while both boys are on summer vacation?” we asked ourselves in June.  That sounded like a great idea.  We could spend time together, explore Bellingham and the surrounding area, and also let Andrew see the campus since he, like Robert had done, was considering the Pacific Northwest as a possible region for his college years.  So we talked to Robert and all decide that we’d Do It <tm>.

So going to see Robert became our vacation…until Robert let us know he was going to move into a studio apartment as his roommate of the past year, Ashley, was graduating over the summer and was likely leaving Bellingham.  And – guess what? – the apartment move could be made to coincide with our trip.  So our vacation kinda morphed into a “let’s move” party.  Sure, the move was only going to take part of one day, but now we had RESPONSIBILITY rather than 100% fun-and-games.  More like 10% work/90% fun-and-games.  Sigh.  (Seriously, it worked out perfectly that we could go up and help make the move happen.  Robert needed someone to drive a pickup and some strong backs/weak minds to assist.)

Planning

As usual, I threw myself into the planning with wild abandon.  Not quite the wild abandon of prior vacations, as this was a much more mundane than a trip to Europe or a cruise…but I was glad to get a chance to engage my Google-fu muscles again and look at various options.
As usual, the first step was to settle on our dates and then look into flights.  The main contenders to fly from SJC to SEA are Alaska, Delta, and Southwest.  I didn’t seriously consider Southwest because I really dislike their boarding procedure and the fact that it basically forces one to check-in EXACTLY 24 hours prior to the flight in order to get a decent boarding group number.

For our Alaskan cruise vacation we’d flown Delta and had experienced a lot of frustration with them.  First off, Delta cancelled our original flight several weeks pre-trip and then assigned us to a new flight.  Then that flight changed schedule 3-4 times before, eventually, returning to the original schedule.  And on our day of departure the flight was delayed due to equipment problems which put us at risk of missing our connecting flight to Anchorage.  So after that experience I vowed to use the (more expensive but higher rated) Alaska Airlines flights.

But it turns out that Alaska’s flights use really cramped seating.  I don’t recall exactly, but it was something like narrow (17.5”) seats combined with tight seat pitch – around 29” IIRC.  Delta was flying Embraer 175s with wider seats and 1-2” more pitch – and the width won out.  So I booked the flight on the smaller Delta plane.  After booking we changed the trip dates when Robert’s move-in date changed, and the updated dates were less expensive than our original dates, resulting in our receiving a credit.  I turned around and plowed a portion of that credit into Economy Plus seats which gave us even MORE distance between rows, a bit more seat width, AND gave us dedicated overhead bin space.  The latter means that we wouldn’t have to “play the system” like we normally do and check our bags at the gate if/when the airline offered free stowage in order to help them free up limited overhead space.  We could carry our bags onboard without worrying about the stress of fighting for bin space.  In hindsight, I’m betting that the flight is going to be sparsely sold and overhead space will NOT be at a premium…but the extra seat dimensions were the REAL benefit for us.

We’d normally lean to taking Lyft to/from the airport but, as a COVID-exposure control measure, we didn’t want to get into a car with someone we didn’t know whose vaccination status we couldn’t control, so ended up arranging for offsite parking.  Ultimately, the parking fees are likely to have been less than the cost of ride sharing.

For accommodations, the obvious choice was (once again) the Holiday Inn Express both E and I have stayed at during our earlier trips up there.  After some family discussion it was decided that Andrew would stay with Robert (and Ashley) while we would get ourselves a room at the hotel.  While Holiday Inn Express normally offers a hot buffet breakfast we aren’t sure what to expect this time.  For health reasons we might be offered only grab-and-go style foods.  We’ll see.

Of course, we’d need a rental car to get ourselves from Seattle to Bellingham and toodle around town.  WOOF!  Prices were outrageous!  The pandemic apparently caused the rental cars to be weirdly distributed – the airports didn’t have as many cars returning to them as usual.  So what would have previously been a $500 rental was closer to $1000.  Ouch.  We had originally thought about getting an SUV to handle the move, but realized two things: a) an SUV still wouldn’t help us move a bed and/or Robert’s desk; and b) we could rent a UHaul pickup for a few hours in Bellingham for about $50 and get a non-SUV, savings us several hundred dollars.  So a comfy sedan was rented and we were ready with flight, lodging, and transportation.

That left what is usually the BEST part of planning for me: looking for things to do and places to eat.  Alas, Bellingham isn’t a great cultural center so there’s essentially few tourist places in the city to go to.  The attraction of Bellingham is the surrounding areas, filled with natural beauty.  Once you’ve gone to the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention (which E and Robert have done) you’ve pretty much seen The Sight inside city limits.  So planning daily events didn’t involve a lot of gut-wrenching choices.  Basically, this trip’s schedule was “Day 1: fly….Day 2: campus tour (part of day), rest TBD….Day 3: TBD….Day 4: TBD….Day 5: Move Robert FAST and book back to SEA to fly home.”  (Robert couldn’t move in until Tuesday, and Andrew starts school the next day, so we have to complete the move by about 2PM on Tuesday so we have time to drive back to SEA and catch our dinner-time flight.  Shouldn’t be a problem…but the last day unfortunately can’t be a breezy, relaxing one.)

As far as places to eat, this is normally really fun – and Bellingham certainly offers lots of options to be considered.  Unfortunately, in a world of COVID many restaurants were reducing their offerings in order to have choices that were more take-out friendly.  So looking at menus wasn’t as interesting as usual.  And, sadly, some places were either closed or were operating for fewer hours because of severe labor shortages.  Still, despite these issues I never tire of reading menus and a short-list of potential places to eat was built.  Unusually, the list included some options for potential take-out.  Our thinking was that we might want to bring food back to Robert’s apartment and enjoy a private meal with everyone, including Ashley, that didn’t require us to mask up and hope we could find outdoor seating or a socially distanced table inside a restaurant.

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