Moore’s Surprise Birthday Party

Up at 3 am, I rolled from the house about 3:45 am. My rule of thumb is that I can leave the house an hour and forty-five minutes before a flight if I am not checking luggage. It appears that my 5:30 am flight was the first flight leaving Sacramento from Terminal B in the morning! I probably could have cut ten or fifteen minutes from the time that I need to leave the house for a flight this early without luggage.

I caught a 5:30 am Southwest flight to Phoenix. It was less than half full. Boarding with A23, I got a nice exit row aisle seat on a 737 MAX-8. No one else sat in the row!?!

The flight was on the ground in Phoenix just before 8:30 am. With lots of time to kill, my plan for the morning was to hike the Sky Harbor Fitness Trail. I ended up hiking more than six miles in two hours and fifteen minutes. On my first lap, I scouted all of the concourses for somewhere to have breakfast. I ended up having a breakfast burrito and a mimosa at Cowboy Ciao restaurant near gate B22.

After my walkabout, I caught an Uber to the Residence Inn Phoenix Peoria. The hotel is near the Seattle Mariner's spring training venue. I had reserved a two bedroom suite with a sofa bed for Tomasin, Wallen and I. The room wasn't ready so I camped in the lobby reading my book.

I got into the room about 2:30 pm. Wallen and Tomasin rolled up about 3:30 pm. After hanging in the room for a bit, we took off for Moore's surprise birthday party at the Peace Lutheran Church. There were probably 40 to 50 people at the party. Moore showed up about 4:30 pm. We spent about two hours at the church, including having a buffet dinner of Chinese food.

From there, we headed to the Heros Pub and Grub. I would guess that about half of the group at the party ended up at the pub. Over the course of the evening, the group dwindled. At the end of the night, it was just Moore, Patty, Moore's brother Philip, Tomasin, Wallen and I. It was nice to spend some time with Moore in the smaller group. We finally gave up just before midnight and headed back to the hotel.