Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Someone Has to Walk to Providence

Tuesday July 5th, 2011
The time: 2:50 AM
The weather: 57 degrees and dark
The mood: enthusiastically anxious
The first to arrive were two young ‘gentlemen’.  Since the group leaving today are headed to Brown University to take the Women & Leadership course (emphasis on the word ‘women’) I was pretty sure these two gentlemen were not there to replace any of the seven fine young ladies selected to represent the ILC.

Not knowing exactly what was going on I quizzed my two new friends to learn whether they were here to see someone off or whether they might be from a rival gang or something making sure they left town.

They were there to see off their De Anza HS friends to make sure they knew they had the support of their community.

In the six years of the ILC this is a first.  Family members, ILC administrators, Superintendent Dr. Harter and the occasional police officer but never just friends and members of the community.  Brava for our De Anza ladies for having such friends. (Did I mention how early it is?)

One by one our eager new Brownies arrived with family members in tow to have their luggage weighed, pick up the loaner items needed to make their stay more enjoyable and, of course, have the customary group photo taken so the world could see how anxious they were to embark on this new adventure.

As expected, all went well and the seven ladies and their chaperone were ready to depart.  Going along with them would by ILC administrators and School Board members Madeline Kronenberg and Charles Ramsey.

But wait—as they’re packing the airport shuttle it becoming clear that when the shuttle service understood that there would be ten people and their luggage to head to SFO they seemed to have trouble with those double digits used in higher mathematics.  There wasn’t room for 10 travelers plus the driver—not even if someone were to sit on someone else’s lap.  Talk about a major error at the shuttle company’s offices.  [Even before this has been written they have been contacted so a repeat of this will never happen again.]

The ILC is adaptive, though, and we would never let something like this slow us down.

Madeline volunteered to take BART to the airport so the others would not have their trip impeded.

After arriving at the BART station, though, it dawned on Madeline that the first BART train wouldn’t be taking passengers that early.  As a matter of fact, the first train at that station wouldn’t arrive until 4:27 AM arriving at the Coliseum Station at 4:55.  She would then have to catch the Air BART shuttle to then takes  about 20 minutes to get to the airport drop off lot.

Considering that she would still have to get from BART, through Homeland Security, down the miles of corridors to her departure gate and onto the plane in just 15 or so minutes, this would set a bad example for our ILCers.  Especially since anyone with a lick of sense would know it just wasn’t going to happen.

Fortunately, Madeline was lucky enough to be around Mariko Whitenack's father--David--who shuttled Madeline all the way to the airport (in record time)

Now all we have to do is wait on the blogs from the Brown-II group to start rolling in—any minute now.

3 comments:

  1. Don,

    A fine looking bunch. They'll be a big hit in Providence.

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  2. Wow, already some unexpected excitement! I'm glad everything worked out. And that *was* very nice of the guys from De Anza to show up.

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  3. Airport transfers are also known as a guide shared van service. Ride sharing in the service, the service is to share with other passengers and make several stops along the route. SFO Airport Shuttle

    ReplyDelete

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