SJC

I have a business trip to Mountain View, CA this week, so I did a bunch of house stuff yesterday in preparation. I'd really rather stay in town this week, but no such luck. At least I should be able to see some Silicon Valley area friends this week.

My original flight left at 7:30 am to Phoenix, where I would have had a mind-numbing 3.5 hour layover before continuing to San Jose, arriving at 4 pm. I managed to shift that flight to a 4:30 pm departure, with a much shorter pause in Phoenix. The new flight got me into town about 9:30 pm.

San Jose airport (SJC) is clearly from another era, and can barely handle the volume of traffic it now gets. It has to be the busiest airport in that nation that makes you walk on the tarmac. The terminal is cramped, and there aren't as many services offered (e.g. behind the security checkin there is no food) in the terminal. One service usually offered in the terminal is rental cars - at least the counters are there so I usually start the rental car paperwork while waiting for my bag. At SJC, I had to take a shuttle to a nearby offsite location. No big deal, except this forced me to wait for my bag first, and then wait through the rental car shuttle line and ride, and by the time I did all that, the rental car office was closed. I must be spoiled by Orlando airport, which easily accomodated this situation, undoubtedly due to the massive tourist volume for the area's theme parks.

Last time I was here, there was all sorts of construction at the airport, especially in the entry/exit to the airport. It still looks the same; I'm not sure there has been any progress in the construction.

Since I couldn't get my rental car, I had to take a taxi to my hotel (which only has wireless internet and I don't have a wireless card for my work computer, another annoyance). Tomorrow, I'll have to return to the airport in order to pick it up. What an inconvenience.