Bumpety bump!
I am glad to be seeing more replies to this. What happened to a few of the other people who expressed interest the last time?
Man, 2 weeks later, and I would have a shot at being there!!
I can get a flight that would put me at LAX at 1:05 on the 20th and leave from same at 12:30 on the 22nd.
Question is: can I get a ride from someone?
I would love to go.
If I am still in California by that weekend I will do my best to be there.
And just in time when I get back from an extended absence from the boards.
I’ll be there.
Bad News: I have to downgrade my “definitely be there” to “maybe.”
Good News: It’s because I’m being promoted to heading the pastry department at my restaurant–they tend to not like letting people out on the weekends.
Damn.
I really wanted to go, too.
<ahem>
Anyone? Anyone at all?
Durn it, thinksnow, you’re getting out there too early or else I’d try to work something out with you (like picking you up or maybe sharing a rental car). I was going to try to do this trip without taking vacation although I don’t have any plans written in stone yet.
Hey thinksnow - have you looked into flights into SFO, Oakland, or San Jose? If you come in around here I could give you a ride down…
Well, I can go in on a rental car and, obviously, gas, but my flight planning is somewhat limited by the availability of flights (I’ve got a voucher for ATA and they are somewhat limited in their scheduling.)
Well, shoot! I just noticed that ATA flies into SFO. So, any BADs wanna meet me at the airport?
Is there any good hiking near Fresno? I’d like to work up a good, intense sweat Saturday morning, then perhaps do some hiking.
I’ll be there! I’m flying in to SLO around 1 p.m. on the 20th, I believe. I have already begun my campaign of harassing pricciar to meet me there.
Has anyone made hotel arrangements? I really don’t care where I stay, and I’d just as soon be at the same property as other Dopers. It would make carpooling easier at least.
OK guys, I made some phone calls. There is still a big room available at the Madonna. I made this offer before, and I’ll make it again. This room http://www.madonnainn.com/tour/123.asp is available for Friday and Saturday nights that weekend. It sleeps nine. 1 Queen bed in the master suite, and then two other bedrooms with some configuration of 2 doubles and 3 twins. It also has two bathrooms, that fabulous couch, and two fire places. It might be a good random hangout and meeting place for us during the weekend.
It goes for $320/night, which sounds obscene, but 9 ways that is only $71 (plus taxes) each for the whole weekend. My proposal is this: I’ll go ahead and reserve the room for the weekend if I get a couple of confirmed yesses. Your space in the room will be assured when I get your deposit of $90 (to cover the taxes and other random charges they may slap on there - and completely refundable at checkout if the total is less).
Like I said, they cannot hold the room until I cough up the $320, so if you are interested and want me to do this, I need to know TODAY.
At this point my plan is to take one of the twin beds, unless another doper chica wants to share the master with me.
If you are into it you can email me at sonyabarry@yahoo.com
thinksnow if you get into SFO early in the day on Friday, I can pick you up. I want to be on the road by 2:00 to avoid traffic.
I’ve already e-mailed slackergirl, but I guess I should post that I’m interested just to get the ball rolling.
Room:
Oh, hell yeah! I’m in, slacker.
Flight:
Leaving from Indi and arriving in San Fran:
It looks like I’ve got the choice of getting in at 11:22 AM or 4:12 PM, though the first one has me leaving at 6:45 AM, after a 2+ hour drive, versus leaving at 11:45, so I’m not really sure. How keen are you on the “no later than 2 PM arrival?”
As for return flights on Sunday, I seem to have the choice of 12:35 PM (just after noon) and 11:15 PM (just before midnight). Interesting.
Leaving from Dayton, arriving in San Fran:
I’ve got a 4:12 PM arrival and a 11:33 arrival, though both of these have me leaving Dayton about and hour earlier than Indi.
I don’t know, really, but if the only way I can make this is to fly out at 6 in the blessed morning, then I guess that’s what I’ll do.
Just to remind everyone… I won’t be there, so be sure you remind Monster to take pictures (otherwise, his doofy self won’t remember!).
Slackergirl, that rooms sounds GREAT! It’s inexpensive (if we get 9 people), and it looks like a perfect place to hang out and party before/after the bar. And if some people wanted to skip the partying, they could just go into one of the extra bedrooms. I think this place was practically invented for a Doper gathering.
I’ll e-mail ya too, for the money details.
OK guys, if you back out on me I will kill you. The Madonna has my money.
I was starting to feel sad at the lack of interest when I went to bed last night, I thought maybe it had to do with the fact that I left the word “to” out of the subject line of the email I sent out.
Then I woke to a box full of yesses. Actually, I now have one too many yesses, but I bet that somebody (unfortunately) will probably flake, or we do have that giant couch that someone can crash on.
Some of us are going to have to share the double beds, so I tried to put people who’ve met in person in those. So, here is my current proposal for the room/bed distribution:
Master:
Demo and Psycat
Double bed:
Me and Kyla
Double bed:
pricciar and doobieous
3 twins/1 couch
Snooooopy
boli
thinksnow
zyzzyva
Wow.
Demo and psycat are still on the maybe list, so we can reshuffle accordingly if they get their own room, and I’ll absorb the cost of the 9th person if we end up a little short.
As far as the twins/couch problem goes, whoever ends up on the couch can pay $50, and then we can reduce everybody else’s cost accordingly.
If anybody has massive problems or questions about any of this, please email me, it can be hammered out privately much more efficiently.
So, thinksnow and boli, I need emails from you, and then I’ll send out a mass email to everybody with my address and phone number so we can do money things.
And thinksnow, the problem with you getting here at 4:12 is that it will increase the drive time from SF to SLO by at least 2 hours, possibly 3 or 4. If somebody else wants to pick you up later, that’s cool, but I just don’t love you enough to spend the whole day in the car. If you want to catch the earlier flight, I’ll let you sleep in the car on the way down. As far as your return flight goes, you may want to take the later flight, if you can stomach getting home in the middle of the night. We’d have to leave at 7 or 8 am on Sunday to get you to the airport by noon, and I think we might be a little too hungover for that.