March 25 - Coming in to Los Angeles . . .

The alarm went off ‘way too early at 4:30 this morning, but I woke energized, because Anders Price was picking me up en route to Sea Tac Airport, for our trip to Los Angeles.  He showed up at 5:45 a.m., I said my goodbyes to Marty, and we drove up through not too bad traffic.  There was a bit of slowdown in Tacoma due to an earlier accident (4 cars remained on the shoulder), but other than that, it was an uneventful drive.

Anders left his Volvo parked at Wally Park on International Boulevard, and took their shuttle to the airport where we checked our bags at the Alaska Airlines desk.  Neither of us was TSA Pre-screened, so it was a moderately long line to get through Homeland Insecurity, but we passed TSA with little problem.  Our early start allowed plenty of time for me to get a latte, but if we’d been running on a tighter schedule, we would surely have hit bad traffic or something.  I’d rather relax with a little time before the flight, rather than be stressed about getting through Homeland Insecurity and making my plane on time.

No 737 Max's on the tarmac today . . .

We boarded Alaska Flight 1158 on an Airbus 320 at 10:20 a.m.  The airport is full of Airbus, with the Boeing 737 Max planes all grounded due to the crashes.  For once, I think I’m glad to be flying Alaska…  The 959 mile flight to L.A. was at 37,000 feet and was pretty uneventful.  I watched a bit of a movie without sound, read, and dozed before we landed at 1:10 p.m. at LAX & got our bags.  I had made reservations with Prime Time Shuttle to get transportation from the airport to the Best Western in San Pedro, and texted them as soon as we landed.  Then we waited.  And waited.  And . . . well, you get the idea.  I called their number several times, only to get a message that they were “experiencing heavy volume of calls” and my call would be answered in the same order received.  After over an hour, I finally got through, and the person said there was a shuttle that would be there in about 15 minutes.  OK, I can wait.  After half an hour, it was pretty obvious that they weren’t going to be there any time soon.  In this period, we’d seen plenty of the competing Super Shuttle vans go past us, as well as innumerable Lyfts and Ubers picking people up.  Anders had Uber on his phone, so hailed a ride from them, about the time that Prime Time called to say that their shuttle was 20 minutes out…  I told them that we had been waiting nearly 2 hours and to cancel - without any cancellation penalty!  To their credit, they did so.  But, I will likely not ever make reservations with them again.

The Uber ride to San Pedro was through pretty busy traffic, and we finally arrived at the Best Western Plus San Pedro Hotel on Gaffey Street.  From this hotel, it is a straight walk down hill to the Cruise dock, so we decide to check it out and make certain we had the timing down.

We walked from the cruise dock, south along Harbor Blvd. to the Krusty Krab, then back up to Gaffey and decided to eat supper at Rafaello Ristorante.  The motel had a deal with them if you mentioned the motel, they’d give you a 10% discount on your meal, so I had the Basa in red sauce.  Pretty good fish, professional wait staff, and a family-run place with a 1960s ambience.  We finished our walk back to the motel and I was asleep pretty soon thereafter.

San Pedro eBird Checklist is Here