Australia/Hawaii 2002, part 14: California

This is the last entry (which I accidentally left sitting in draft for over a year, oops!). My trip report finishes up the last 2 days of the journey but it's all about wedding stuff in California and what we did in the Carmel area. I arranged my 2002 Australia/Hawaii trip around a friend's wedding; coincidentally, in 2011 I would arrange my 10-week trip to Europe around the wedding of another good friend. Trivia and By The Numbers are at the end of this post; no pictures today of the travel prior to the wedding.

Friday, October 4: Oahu to Los Angeles to San Jose to Carmel
Is Richard Simmons a good omen or a bad omen?

Even if everything had gone exactly on time, I still would have only had an hour to get my luggage from one terminal and check in at another. But at 6 a.m. on a Friday morning, how many people can be at the airport?

I managed to catch somewhere around 3 of hours of sleep on the plane. I practically flew out the door where the Continental flight arrived after I got my luggage, and was lucky that the shuttle bus was right there. And fortunately I didn't have to wait very long to get to the next stop, but it still took time. It was there that I found myself in line at Southwest at 5:50 a.m. asking the gate agent if there was enough time for me to make the 6:05. I got an "are you serious?" look but he said he'd do his best to help me, then he slapped a "late" tag on the bags. Just in case I didn't make it, I had already made a backup plan. Vanessa was driving in from San Francisco to San Jose to pick me up around 7:30, and I'd call her if I didn't make my flight. The next one was only an hour later, so we still had plenty of time to get to Carmel by 3 pm.