Friday, June 21, 2002
Meredith got up and went off to teach her Reading class, and Mike started packing things. We got out of the house on time, dropped Mike's overdue library book off at work so the Microsoft Library Police would stop threatening him, and got to San Francisco Airport (SFO) with plenty of time. Mike got singled out for special screening when trying to enter the secure area of SFO. This was perhaps due to his metal coffee cup setting off the metal detector. Both of us tried to point out that it would, but the screener insisted that Mike walk through with it anyway -- then said, "Oh, since you set off the metal detector, you need to come over here." Neato.
The flight was late getting out of SFO, due to the fog that is really only a problem 364 days out of the year or so, but it wasn't too late, and we managed to score some exit row seats (gotta love that leg room). Then we arrived in Dallas for our connecting flight (yes, Dallas was the connecting airport for SFO - Detroit ... whatever).
We rushed to our gate, found out that it was going to be a few minutes late, too, so grabbed some sandwiches and some horribly burned coffee -- only to then discover that our flight has now been delayed some more. Well, we could have had a nicer dinner. Ah well. The flight continued to be delayed, as they explained that the airplane we were scheduled to be on wouldn't pressurize. OK, that sounds bad. We had a brief scare, about an hour after the scheduled departure, when the gate agent announced, "The plane you've been waiting for is c.....oming in now." We were sure he was going to say 'cancelled' (as was most of the crowd there). But we did eventually make it on to the not very full flight, and quickly moved to the empty exit row (yay!).
Unfortunately, all this delay meant that we didn't arrive into Detroit until about 1:45 AM. By the time we got our luggage, got the car, and made it to the hotel in Ann Arbor, it was close to 3 AM. Bed time...
Saturday, June 22, 2002
We were supposed to make it to the 'not a rehearsal, but a walk-through of the place we're getting married' that happened at 1 PM today. Instead, we woke up about 1 PM. Oops. This would later turn out to be more of a mistake than we initially realized.
We soon discovered that Meredith, having carefully packed all the nice clothes that she would need for the wedding ceremonies, forgot to pack normal clothes. Our first trip, then, was to the mall across the street, where we found lunch, a haircut for Meredith, and some clothes.
Peter called, and met us back at our hotel to hang out for a while before the out-of-town-guest (OOTG -- pronounced 'oot-guh') dinner. Dinner was, conveniently enough, in our hotel. Several of rather cleverly, we thought, grabbed seats at the table closest to the buffet line, only to discover that we were, in fact, the second-to-last table to be served.
Afterwards, lots of Yale people congregated back in our room, where the Yalies practiced the piece that they would sing the following day at the reception.
Sunday, June 23, 2002
We got up, ate breakfast, and got ready to go. Here is where not going to the site yesterday hurt us. We got lost. We never saw the street that was supposed to be the landmark before our turn, nor the site itself. Texas later said that he got lost too. Clearly we must be cursed. Fifteen miles down the road, we realized that we had erred, and turned around. This time, we didn't miss it.
Being late was fine, except that Meredith was supposed to play music before the start of the ceremony on a keyboard hooked up to an amp, and she hadn't gotten a chance to check it out first. Sure enough, the power adapter that was with it was the wrong polarity. Someone ran out to find D-cell batteries, while Dave called his dad and asked him to bring some. In the end, we ended up with 24 D-cell batteries for the keyboard that required six. Better safe than sorry.
The ceremony was very nice, if unbelievably hot. Outdoor weddings at 12:30 PM in Ann Arbor in late June tend to be that way, I guess. Mike was grateful that he could shed his coat, and felt sorry for the groom and groomsmen in tuxes.
After the reception, we went back to collapse for a few minutes, then met up with those who weren't flying out that night for dinner. We wound up at the Arbor Brewing Company. Mike was happy to have hot wings for the first time in a long time.
Finally, we retired back to our room and, with great sadness, set our alarm for 5 AM (aka 2 AM Pacific time) for our flight home.