So as I said, I had some strong suspicions. And I was right 🙂

I left work at 2 PM and got home to find that takaza had packed everything up and was ready to go. genet and roho showed up shortly after, ostensibly to ride to the airport with us since Roho had to work in California. We took Metra in to O’Hare and picked up our boarding passes at American Airlines. I figured we were headed to the West Coast, which meant that our options were most likely either San Francisco or Seattle. I checked the flights and saw that the next flight to Seattle was leaving in an hour; given that Dan wasn’t hyperventilating, I knew that wasn’t our destination. Lo and behold, our boarding passes said San Francisco. Ta daa!

After passing through Security, we met up with Roho and genet again who, what a surprise, were on the same flight as us! I voiced my skepticism, and they admitted that yes, they would be joining us! As we browsed around through the airport bookstore who should we run into but linnaeus. He would be joining us as well. We happened to be joined for a while by calapurr, who was in transit through O’Hare and waiting to meet up with justincheetah, but he was just by to chat. Our flight was only a half-hour late (which is saying something for O’Hare these days) and the three and a half hour flight was uneventful. We had a bit of difficulty getting the rental car (we wouldn’t all fit in the Explorer they first offered us, but we were able to swap over to a Saturn Outlook). After that was a rather harrowing drive for Dan through San Francisco and over the Bay Bridge (traffic was light since it was 11 PM, but it was a bit twisty and narrow through some of the construction on US 101). After about an hour’s drive, we arrived at our destination, a lovely rental house in the town of Napa. We went to bed shortly after, and now we have company and I need to wrap this up 🙂

More to come (with pictures!) later…