Tier Point Run to San Jose in Nov 2023: Day 7 – San Jose SJC to Los Angeles LAX

Time to head home and I am looking forward to getting back to the Vickster and associated pets…

I needed to start off the day early, with a visit to a supercharger. I needed to take the car back with at least 73% charge.

Since I was awake early, I decided I might as well go and get the charging done, so I was at the 150kW Coleman Ave Supercharging station not long after 2am.

I was there around 45 mins, but it was too early to find a Starbucks, so I headed back to the hotel to sort my boarding passes out.

Checking in was fine. The AA app allows me to scan my passport so I can avoid the unnecessary visit to the check in desk at the airport.

The equivalent for the BA app is in the process of being rolled out. Apparently it’s available on iPhone but not on Android.

I had a right faff with getting my boarding passes printed out. As with all of the hotels I have stayed in recently, the printing facilities simply do not work.

So I had to email the PDFs to the front desk and they printed them out for me. Although that took some doing as well: printed one PDF twice; prints were double sided. Agh!

By this stage, it was heading on towards 4:15am and the nearest Starbucks was due to open at 4:30am, so that was my next focus.

The Tesla seems to have an odd idea about the best way to get somewhere.

Even though the Starbucks was just less than 2 miles up the road, I ended up going all round the houses including driving a mile up Highway 87!

Ultimate recognition though at the Starbucks. I was first in and the guy serving me asked me whether I was having my usual (which I was) and he said “see you next time”!

By the time I got back to the hotel, drank my coffee and had a shower, it was time to head to the airport.

It was only 10 mins drive away and returning my car to Hertz was dead easy. I commented to the agent that checked my car, that it had seriously high mileage for a rental: 70,000 miles.

Across the road and into the Terminal A TSA Precheck was quick and easy.

I then wandered down to Gate 2 at thewest end of the terminal building to see what the position was. It was a fair old way!

With over 90 mins to departure and no lounge to use, I decided to walk to the other end of the terminal building.

That took me well over 15 mins. I’d think it must be not far off a mile long and be at least twice as long as Heathrow T5.

By the time I got back to Gate 2, I was 8,000 steps lighter and needed a sit down! Good exercise nonetheless.

I am always concerned when flying on smaller aircraft about the potential for my bag being Gate checked. That clearly wouldn’t work arriving into Dublin, due to me doing a B2B.

I therefore started mentally preparing reasons why my bag couldn’t be checked through to Dublin. I hope it doesn’t come to that!

Finally got on board into seat 01A and secured my overhead bin space. After the event I always think I was overly cautious, but I just can’t take the risk.

Already looking forward to queuing up for my next Starbucks in TBIT.

Just as we hit the runway, the guy in 01C (aisle on the other side of the aircraft) made the Catholic sign of the cross on his chest, which was very disconcerting!

As it happens all was fine with the flight. Interestingly, this was another partner flight. this time it was a SouthWest operated flight for AA. On the way out, it was a Horizon Air operated flight for Alaska Airways.

I was surprised by the cabin crew when I was offered a snack and I somehow chose garlic flavoured olives, which smelt disgusting.

At least there was some service in board.

Arrived into Gate 52G, which us the first I have need to use the Eagle’s Nest as they call it.

The Eagle’s Nest tends to be used by smaller American Eagle flights. You need to catch a bus there and back.

After deboarding, I found the queue for the bus back to the main terminals was horrendous, until I realised there were two queues. The one heading to T4 was fairly short. The one heading to T5 was really long. Luckily I was heading to T4.

Follow the whole story here: Tier Point Run to San Jose in Nov 2023