Hanging out in London

First of all I would like to point out that the keyboards in London are out of control. Where the shift key should be, it is not. Where the @ key should be, it is not. I refuse to accept any personal responsibility for any typo's that may or may not occur in this post.

While I have a quick 6 1/2 hours to kill I thought I would let you know that I've survived the first half of my travels and am eager to complete them (though not over eager to sit on another plane for 9 more hours..blech)

Lea and the girls drove me to the airport yesterday morning. The ticket agent for United Airlines was incredibly cool and made quite a few jokes at my expense. After ensuring my luggage would make the 4 transfers through the 3 different airlines she offered Lea and the girls a pass so they could see me off at the gate. We made the journey to the terminal via a train and learned that my flight was delayed for what at the time read an hour. Turned out to be closer to two hours which was about the amount of time I had between flights in San Francisco...yikes!

I ran off the plane and found that I needed to go through security again (the buses that bypass security had stopped running for the day). Whenever I am late for a flight, security seems to move at the speed of STOP. After what seemed like an eternity, I passed through the metal detector, pulled up my pants, strapped on my belt, tied my shoes and tried to leave my camera behind until a nice young lady asked if the bag belonged to me..phew.

I ran to the terminal, it was loading and 10 minutes later we were taxiing the runway. Cool. The Boeing 777 is a nice plane. No question about it. TV's on the back of every headrest, plenty of legroom (be sure to upgrade to Economy Plus if it's available..well worth it!). The stewards and stewardesses seemed to be having a bad night on my side. Those on the other side were having a great time, but my side had a German guy with control issues.."No! You cannot have two bags of pretzels! We must ensure everyone gets one on the plane!" I was shaky from no food, but was terrified of this guy so I let it go :) The other gal was a bit cranky too but we were fed, we had movies and I kid you not...I could not sleep a wink. As I am typing this, my eyes are blurred, I'm sure I'm babbling too much and a sure sign of sleep deprivation..I'm figuring out this stupid keyboard already.

I don't know if you realize this or not, but in London, they drive on the wrong side of the road too. I had to take a bus to Terminal 4 which is wayyy out in the boondocks and I'm not too big a man to admit I was white knuckeling the ride over. I knew in theory the wrong side of the road is the right side here, but the reality was different.

I'm now debating on food. Nothing sounds good right now but I need to eat. Wish me luck!

I doubt I'll be able to make any further updates until I return. I'm glad I have this blog as it's served as a nice distraction to prevent me from buying duty free goods that I have absolutely no use for.

See ya!

Mat