The Seeing-Eye Dog (Epilogue)

I really didn't expect to write anything else on the "blind seeing-eye dog" incident, but as you might expect these things have a difficult time dying down.

The final incident occurred on a trip I was to take to San Francisco on January 16th, 2019, with a hotel stay in Burlingame, CA (Picture A).

After I booked the trip, I suddenly found the "blind status" back on the reservation.... I went on a rampage. I called Expedia US, who informed me that Expedia Japan alerted all other Expedia worldwide sites on the matter "for my convenience"...

As with last time, Expedia could not remove the status, since it had already been sent to Alaskan Airlines. They simply said to take it up with the airline at check-in time.

At National Airport, during check-in. I raised bloody hell. I was not able to checkin at the machine since "technically" I had a pet. (Picture B).

"Do I look like I am blind?", I shouted at the Alaskan Airline Rep.

"Sir, you do not look like you are blind." replied the rep.

"So PLEASE remove the status..." I said annoyingly.

She went to check with her manager. As it turned out, Their system really didn't have the logic to remove a blind status from a user's profile once it had been added... mostly likely since people don't usually become "unblind".

The flight was to board at 5PM that day, but 5PM came and went. The flight rep mentioned something about high winds in the bay area which hindered landing into SFO. They passed out meal vouchers... which is always a bad sign, as that means a LONG delay.

I finally boarded around 10PM, and arrived into SFO around 1AM Pacific Time, or 4AM East coast time. I was dead tired. I had booked a rental car, but decided at that hour to just skip the car rental and take a taxi to the hotel. I would get to the rental car the next day.

When I arrived at the Bay Landing Hotel in Burlingame, the hotel was ENTIRELY black. No lights were on.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" I asked the cab driver.

"Sir, this IS your hotel. The high winds knocked out the power generators. There are no lights in all of Burlingame." he reponded.

I got out of the cab and looked around. It literally was pitch-black as far as the eye could see. It's as if I was transported to epi-center of some "Zombie Apocalypse" movie.

A long line of people waited by the front-desk in an attempt to check-in. There was no computer system at that point; so the hotel was basically going by the "honor system". People simply told the front desk how long they were to stay for, and the staff there use paper and pencil to write this information down, along with the guest's credit card number.

While waiting, I got the full story on what happened. The winds that night were the strongest in 50 years. They were so strong, in fact, that they blew over a power generator in the area and knocked out power in all of Burlingame. (Picture C)

Everyone was saying "we NEVER seen anything like this"....

When it got to my turn to check in, the only rooms that were available were on the top floor (naturally) and or course, there was no elevator. The lady showed me to the stairwell, which was absolutely dark.

I cringed at the next statement the lady made as we started into the stairwell.

"Well, I guess you now know what it's like to be blind ha-ha-ha-ha".

Jesus Christ, DO NOT SAY WHAT I THINK YOU ARE ABOUT TO SAY!!!!

Of course, she said it.

I saw the lady smile as she pointed the flashlight towards the lobby. It walked towards us.

"We have a dog that knows the way up. Just follow him. He'll take you there no problem...."