I seldom sleep well on days before I fly.  It’s the combination of fear and excitement.  I have a fear of flying dating back to a day in 1978 when I was sitting in an exit row, landing gear on one side collapsed and I had to pop the emergency window and exit onto the wing.  So, I was up at 6:20 when we sailed into Seattle and was rewarded with the picture below.

We continued to pier 91 at Smith Cove closing the circle of our cruise.

The stewards had put out scales on each deck for us to weigh baggage.  But we didn’t need to use it.  Seattle has a free service called “Port Valet.”  You sign up, give them your flight number, they get your baggage tags and boarding passes and deliver them to your room the day before you fly.  They also cover any overweight bag costs so I didn’t need to schlep y bag to the scale at the midship elevator lobby.  You pack, tag your bags and leave them in the hallway outside your room before midnight and the next time you see them is on the carousel at your destination.  We tried it. It worked.  It made the trip home so much easier.  As we went to settle our bill, we found that Holland America had credited our amount with an additional $900 to compensate us for the loss of our air conditioning in Yokohama.  This was more than generous.

HAL wanted us all off the ship by 9 am so they could turn it around for the cruise leaving that afternoon for Australia.  Our flight was not until 3:35 so we booked the last bus transfer that they offered at 9:15. We figured we had good books and could spend time warm and dry at the airport.  We expected to be called to leave the ship just before 9.  They called our departure group at 8:10. OK, perhaps the buses were running early.  It would be a kindness to leave early and give our stewards more time to turn the room around.  That wasn’t the way it worked out.   The buses scheduled to leave between 7:30 and 8:00 were not back from the airport for their second run so we ended up standing in the Seattle cool damp (we had acclimatized to Hawaii) for 45 minutes.  This may have been Holland’s biggest slipup of the cruise, but I was in a forgiving mood because of the surprise credit from the night before.

We got to the airport at about 10 for our 3:35 flight and learned that we could not clear TSA until, at most, four hours before flight time.  Fortunately, we did not have to deal with un checked bags and the cruise lines had set up a lounge on the landside for us to wait until we could clear TSA.  I had a good Louise Penny book.

When we did get through TSA we headed for the AMEX Centurian Lounge, to which our AMEX platinum card is supposed to give us access.  Who knew that we needed to make a reservation to get into an airport lounge.  So, we headed for the North Satellite, found seats near our gates, got a mocha, and a sone and read our way to flight time.

Alaska Airlines was kind and moved me so Suzi and I each had an empty seat next to us for the leg between Seattle and Ketchikan.  We rode from Ketchikan to Sitka on a full plane with the K town swim team on board.  In Sitka our bags were on the carousel, our friend Dave had put our car in the parking lot and the K town swim team kindly helped load our bags into my Jeep.  Welcome home!