The last morning, a Sunday, was spent close to the hotel, at the Ferry Building where a light breakfast was planned. We would dine al fresco on a bench overlooking the water.
At some point though we would have to say Farewell to the Ferry and make our way back to the hotel to pack and drive to the airport for our flight back to Chicago.
As we came to the exit from the freeway to the Return Rental Cars ramp the traffic ahead of us was stopped, as was the traffic coming towards us and there were Police and Ambulance sirens and lights.
Luckily we are getting off here thought I and drove up over the highway to continue on. Cresting the top of the overpass we could see a Police roadblock ahead. We were in a line of puzzled drivers.
We inched forward as each car ahead was turned away by the road block. When it was our turn to be by the officer I asked him how we could get to the Rental Drop-off. Keep moving was his response and he waved us away. So now we were headed back the way we came. Beads of sweat appeared on my brow. Luckily the navigation system was still running and I knew roughly where I needed to be so even though the nag was telling me the usual "If possible make a legal U-turn" I drove by instinct as I come from a long line of Homing Pigeons. It worked! Soon the Nav system had me located as heading in the right direction and away from the road block, although I could now see it again but was on the other side of it-the Good Side!! Hooray! The sweat dried up.
We dropped the car at Hertz where it was business as usual -friendly and efficient and took the monorail to our terminal.
Once there we pushed our luggage cart to the United desks only to find they were in semi-darkness and the agents were standing back from the desks, not helping anyone. I asked a man standing aside with his luggage-"what's going on?" without even capitalizing the w. "Airport's shut down"
No flights in (who cares?) or out (We care!). No information via P.A or announcement boards.
Sorry we're closed basically. No flights out...we had to come up with Plan B.
Call the Omni !! Carol called and booked another room. We got a taxi to take us back to the city and the driver told us he had been listening to the radio and it seems that an Asiana Airlines Jet had come in to land, too low and too slow and had crashed on a runway and there were fatalities. A tragic accident caused by human error. So it was a sombre ride back to the Omni but we were happy to be there rather than maybe sitting on the floor of an airport lounge, waiting and wondering.
We spent as I recall a total of two hours listening to Rhapsody in Blue as it played on the United Please hold and we'll be with you Whenever tape. Two hours with the battery running down. We tried again later for another two hours and were offered a flight the next day via Las Vegas and Denver. That we declined. We thought we'd let some time pass to see how things developed. The airport would have to open again. I thought of driving to Los Angeles and taking a flight from there.
However we had a room for the night and as we were back in SF we made the best of it. I took a walk back to the Ferry Building again for some sun and fresh air. We made plans for dinner at the Waterfront and called our cat sitter to have her go visit the cats and tell them the news.
So that will explain why in the video we say farewell to the Ferry Building and show up there again a few hours later.....
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