LA Weekend

A 7:30 a.m. flight meant a 5:15 wakeup, which in Seattle in January is way predawn. We took Hunnybear’s Nissan down the secret freeway to MasterPark, where as usual the valet instantly met us and loaded our bags into the van. I told him “Island 2” instead of “United” because if you say “United” they want to drop you off at Island 1, which is 100 feet from Island 2 and 100 feet farther from the same escalator you take at Island 2. There is no reason whatsoever to get off at Island 1.

We waited only seconds at the 1K/Full-Fare First Class line and got checked in by a friendly but nameless agent who offered to change our seat assignments from 1C and D. I explained to her about the most desirable seats on all the various aircraft. On the 737, which is actually a nice airplane in the regular (non-shuttle) configuration if you can get one of the eight first-class seats and discount the fact that there is no video, seats 1C and D are ideal because they have several more inches of legroom than 1A and B. Row 2 isn’t bad unless you don’t get your choice of meal. On the 757 it’s the reverse: the cutout is on the left side, so 1A and B are preferred. The agent laughed that I knew the seating in such detail. She collected 1000 miles in upgrades from each of us (Hunnybear now has her own as a Premier Executive) and sent us to gate N3.

We got a cup of coffee in the Red Carpet Club, read USA Today, and headed up around 7:05. I noticed that our flight 771 was now running as a Thai Airways codeshare, connecting presumably to a TG transpacific flight. Curiously, though, the TG flight was listed as leaving from N11, not N3. I pointed this out to the RCC agents and it was changed by the time we got up the escalator.

The flight was already boarding, so we walked right up to the agent and asked, “Is this the Thai Airways flight to Los Angeles?” She answered, “I guess—whatever,” looking bemused. She examined our boarding passes very closely but let us on anyway.

First Class filled up, but the back was only about two-thirds full. John, our flight attendant on his first day back from vacation, served up a piping hot breakfast sampler, our favorite. This one had an excellent peppery frittata, a wedge of something that tasted like bread pudding with crème anglaise, a disk of hash-browns, and a gnarled, sad-looking single strip of bacon. We passed on the basket-o-carbohydrates, which included croissants, bagels, and muffins. UA service is definitely superior to AS on the SEA-LAX run, even in the 737.

We landed on time, and in the vaunted Terminal 8, where Shuttle connections leave from. Every other time I have flown from SEA-LAX recently the plane has docked at Terminal 6, a shared terminal that is quite a hike from both baggage claim and connections. This time, though, we had neither baggage to take nor connections to make, so I’m afraid the gesture was wasted. Since we carried on our bags, we bypassed baggage claim and went directly to the phone bank to call the Four Points LAX for the complimentary shuttle. I had neglected to check, when making the reservation, that they indeed had a complimentary shuttle.

Fortunately they did have a shuttle, which came after about 15 minutes. On the short ride to the hotel, the Hispanic driver opened the bus door to have a conversation with another shuttle driver at a traffic light regarding job interviews for shuttle drivers. I guess they wanted to move up to a better hotel.

The Four Points is the former Continental Plaza, a hotel so nondescript that it doesn’t really deserve to have a name, in the same way that the blue mailboxes all over America don’t have their own names. The bus driver unloaded our bags while Hunnybear closed multimillion-dollar deals on her cell phone. I only had a one and a five, so I tipped him a one. The other couple did not tip him at all. He brought our bags over to the bell desk and informed us that check-in was through the lobby.

Check-in was a small counter big enough for two clerks. They had an elaborate rope course set up with two separate queues. The main queue had two groups of people in it already, while the secondary queue, sporting two large gold Starwood Preferred Guest signs, was empty. There was only one clerk working. I stood in the SPG line to see what would happen. The one clerk was having a long discussion in Spanish with her customer, and after about five minutes a second clerk arrived, on the far side of me, and called the next person in the main queue. A few minutes later, the original clerk finished and the called the next person in the main queue.

“Excuse me, but is anyone going to be staffing the Starwood Preferred Guest line?” I asked. “They were here first,” she replied. “Yes, they were. What is the point of having a special line for your preferred guests if no one is going to be staffing it?” “The line starts from the middle,” she replied.

At that point the couple who was on the bus with us and now the next group in the main line insisted that I go next. I insisted right back that they go next. Well, I’m usually a one “I insist” kind of guy, but in this case I had definitely been the instigator so I let the exchange go three rounds before I gave in and checked in. We got a small room on the top (seventh) floor with a nice view of the runway, as I had requested. There is actually an eighth floor under renovation that can only be accessed from the center elevator.

The room was what I would expect of a standard room at a Four Points, having a functional desk (but without a convenient phone jack—no problem for an Internet junkie with a 25-foot cord)—one phone line, an empty refrigerator, and a shower/tub with a nice wide sink counter in the bathroom. The king bed had two large foam pillows and a call to guest services brought two small feather pillows 45 minutes later. There was no Platinum amenity box and a visit to the front desk confirmed that they didn’t have such a beast here, which surprised me since I understood every property in the chain had them.

At $69 the Four Points LAX was about what I would expect, but I’m more of a Westin kind of guy. Weekend rates at the Westin LAX are usually around $100.

We met up with TripTalker and Dave Rottweiller at the seminar. Lunch today was at Jerry’s Deli (NASDAQ: DELI) in Marina del Rey, a short drive from the airport. I got a nice pastrami Reuben with bland fries. Jerry’s is a serviceable chain of delis with good sandwiches and mediocre service. Makes me homesick for the East Coast.

We spent the day in seminar, then went back to Marina del Rey for dinner at Lotus, a serviceable Chinese restaurant. My favorite dish there was shrimp on sizzling rice. Since we had arisen so early, we called it an early night and watched Freeway with Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland on HBO. It’s a very well-done send-up of psycho-killer movies, over the top in just about every way.

The alarm clock went off not once but twice during the night. Housekeeping ought to turn it off between guests, but I also ought to remember to check it whenever I check in.

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