I need to preface this post to try to lessen my sounding like a complete asshole. The journey detailed below is in no way meant to taint the reason for the trip in the first place — to attend a wedding, a wonderful one, of two close friends. I had a great time and would not have missed it for the world. I would have gladly experienced the same snafus and delays a million times over in order to get there again. But my nerves, they are frayed.

I am typing this while nursing an overpriced beer at the Yankee Pier at the San Francisco International Airport — a seafood joint not chosen for its fare (I’m allergic to all things aquatic) but for the fact that it’s several paces from my gate that, at some point in my lifetime, will welcome a plane that will take me home to Southern California.

I’m thinking it wasn’t the best choice, as I am having to pause, as the other patrons are, to bat away flies and other winged critters, perhaps attracted to the smell of stranded desperation. It would be, will be, funny, but not right at this particular moment.

The only way I can make this weekend’s trip better in my mind is to view it as a large, karmic debt that I’m paying off, all at once. When (if?) I ever get home, I’ll delude myself into thinking that the next few trips will be blissfully free of the awesome challenges I have encountered.

There’s a way to present this trip that would make it look like the best weekend ever — I roadtripped with some dear old friends (laughing much of the way) to a wedding of more dear friends. It was in Tahoe! The weather was exquisite! I caught up with loved ones I hadn’t seen in ages, and ate and drank and danced under fairy lights on a deck overlooking piny wilderness. I ate as many cupcakes as I wanted.

I got to squish (gently) my new greatnephew. An adorable drooly baby who smiled at me till he snuggled into the crook of my next and fell asleep. His name is Vinnie!

I had meals in San Francisco with awesome ladies, and slept lots and unplugged from all devices for a while.

But it you look closely, you’ll see the splice marks, where I edited out the dark dark matter.

Perhaps the karmic debt that I’m pretending to pay off is some sort of injustice I perpetrated of a travelling nature, in another life. For almost every single step, every moment that I moved from one geographical spot to another, was plagued with ridiculousness.

Creating the crap base, on which all the other crap was piled, was my drive to Los Angeles International Airport from my home. I try hard, so hard, not to use LAX as an airport option, but often the ticket prices are so much cheaper that I cave in — thinking to myself, this time it won’t be hard to get there. The freeway could very well be clear and uncluttered for me this time! Poor Becky. After stop-go-stop-going the whole way down, through the godforsaken Valley and onto that blasted 405 interchange, I parked in the most expensive long-term parking lot closest to the airport, in mortal fear of missing my flight.

I, of course, should not have worried, as my flight was delayed by and hour and a half. I found an airport bar, some LA equivalent of the Yankee Pier, and started what was to be a weekend IV drip of alcohol. This was to enhance my coping capabilities. It worked.

Once in screaming distance of San Francisco, I took Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) from the airport to the city. A crewcut, 50-something mining engineer sitting next to me struck up a conversation that started pleasantly enough. Until this exchange:

Him: What brings you to this area?
Me: A wedding in Tahoe.
Him: Wow, you don’t have a lot of luggage.
Me: Well, I’m good at packing light.
Him: People are gonna mistake you for a hooker! Are you a hooker?

At the moment I swung my head at him in a confused, cartoon doubletake (wh wh whaaa?) the conductor announced, a good 20 miles from my destination, that there was “police activity” at a station up ahead and were were going to be stalled for an unknown amount of time.

I walked from BART to my friend’s house — this 15-minute walk made remarkable by the fact that it was the only time in the whole weekend that nothing happened while I was in the act of transporting myself.

The next morning, I rode the bus to BART in order to meet Dan in Oakland, to see his gorgeous new house and to pick up our rental car. On the 22 Fillmore bus (some of you familiar to San Francisco may be smirking at the mention of this, the most Felliniesque of all the bus lines,) I sat across from a young man. I’m not going to go into graphic detail here, but let’s just say that at one point that he began to, um, vigorously make himself happy, an activity that one should do in the privacy of one’s home. Fortunately I was at my stop right then and simply hurled myself out of the bus.

The traffic was periodically pain-in-the-ass on the way to Tahoe, and there was a lot of miles logged while in the Tahoe area. But I can’t complain too much — Dan took on the driving for the weekend. Thanks, Dan!

Because, when I took the wheel to drive us back to the Bay Area, the gods decided to slow things down a bit — a trip that should’ve taken 4.5 hours (max) took 7 hours.

Taking a simple MUNI ride downtown this morning to meet a friend for lunch: the train just stopped. Stopped. Knowing my friend was waiting on her lunch hour, and this fucking train wouldn’t move, started some pent-up tears of frustration.

Fortunately I was distracted by a young man in my train car, who, after he told the person on the other line of his cell phone conversation to “hang on,” leaned over and started vomiting in the corner.

After lunch, I didn’t want to tempt fate with BART back to the SF Airport, so left good and early in ample time to catch my flight.

A flight that, as it turns out, was cancelled. The flight on which I am attempting to get on via the standby system, has been delayed by several hours, I sit here, draining my second beer, wondering what’s waiting from me on the shuttle to the long term parking lot, in my car, on my freeway, on my walk up to my apartment.

At this point, I’ll feel lucky and blessed to make it home, to feel secure in the knowledge that I have worked off my bad mojo in one fell swoop, and that my life, from the moment I fall into to bed to my last breath (decades from now,) that everything will be smooooooth sailing.

Postscript: After the airport shuttle driver screeched to a halt in the middle of the long-term parking lot, hurtling me against my luggage, she muttered “this is where you get off” — leaving me a good few football-lengths from my car. I arrived to my car to find a ticket on the windshield (stupid registration stickers,) and a stop-go fest back up to Ventura. It took me eight hours to get home from San Francisco. The walk from the carport to my apartment, however, was uneventful. Now begins permanent serenity!