Words    Words    Words

I hope I learn a lasting lesson from the last several months. This is the first trip I’ve ever taken where I was literally tossing unfolded clothes into my checked bag 30 minutes before we drove to the Houston airport, and I certainly hope it’s the last trip with such last-minute trip preparation. (To be fair, the day before I had set aside for my packing and planning, but got called into work for 10 hours. This tends to disrupt one’s schedule.) I don’t usually travel with a checked bag, but it turned out to be terribly useful this time. Kit was also incredibly helpful in getting Steve and I ready and out the door. If only precognition worked and on-demand, we could have taken our sweet time, because…

We got to the airport to discover that our plane was delayed for two hours. At first we were thankful, since it meant we had time to eat and rest a bit from the last-minute frenzy. We learned our error after boarding, as the airline exercised the increasingly popular practice of human abuse through keeping customers hostage. I refer, of course, to the widespread trend of keeping customers in their non-ergonomical seats and germ-filled air for hours of delay with no getting up, moving around, or refreshments provided. In our case, we spent two hours at the gate while they kept lying to us about “just a few more minutes” and “paperwork”. Strangely enough, I suspect our good hosts of lying because one of the many things I like to pay attention to while flying is the sound of the engines, and the engine in question did NOT sound right, in any of the several tests and attempted ignitions. They pulled away from the gate at one point, thinking they’d fixed it, but then pulled right back (and we had to wait another 20 minutes for an engineer to return). Oh yes, the confidence is just oozing from the bulkheads now! The solution involved, among other arcane workings, rebooting the entire plane as they shut down lights, air circulation, and other systems to attempt to start it up again in better working condition. And more “paperwork”. Finally we take off, and I remark to Steve that I’m not very fond of this new trend of difficulties in my last two outgoing flights, and would prefer it not become a tradition, thank you.

iPod vending machines. In the airport. Yes, really.

At least on international flights the seats are less-uncomfortable (I can’t bring myself to say “more comfortable”) . Another lesson learned: when one is going on an international flight when one has way too much online work to do, it is absolutely worth the expense to upgrade to business class to get the laptop outlet.

Watching the flight progress on the back of seat TV is really cool. It cycles between showing you a zoomed out and zoomed in view of where you are, and information such as altitude, outside tempurature, distance to destination, and time at destination.

I’ve never ridden in a 777 before. It is really large. Ten seats across. Really, really large. I’ve seen these planes in movies! (Speaking of which, I should re-watch Airplane! sometime soon.) Steve says several families could live in one of these after the apocalypse–and they will.

The clouds over Ireland this morning (the 10th) look exactly like Andrea’s undyed fluffy fiber. (Yeah baby, that one was for you!)

It is geographically obvious from the air as soon as we pass over land that we’re in a different country. Everything is cultivated for hundreds of years and looks it, down to individual trees. In fact, the trees provide a rich green border to the endless array of fields. The fields themselves cover the verdant spectrum, with tan and dark brown fallow acres providing a chaotic visual spacing where patterns and sense dance on the tip of the brain, just out of reach. It takes about 30 seconds of this amazing view for me to think, “Wow, Mom should totally take aerial pictures of England and use that as a model for a whole new line of ceramics. Nearly regular puzzle-patches of brown and green, connected across the whole island by a nervous system of the trees that border field and town. The roofs are scattered flecks of glittering mica. Argh, England causes prose to easily purple. (Anyway, Mom, that one’s for you! If you happen to make them, I want some!)

Steve likes the complimentary scotch on the plane, as well as the wine with meals. I read Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s book Making Book on the flight, in which I was happy to learn that the split infinitive and ending sentences with prepositions rules aren’t always the heinous crime I was taught they were.

Landing in heathrow airport, finally! And first cool-yet-slightly-creepy thing: IRIS. It’s a program you can sign up for where you walk up to a machine and it encloses you, scans your retinas, and checks your ID. If you pass, it lets you out the other side. I really enjoyed watching this process, very dystopic SF in look and feel.

In Heathrow, Steve and I each quickly notice the same two things about the crowd: 1) Yay multiculturalism! Oh, how my eyes miss that variation and drink it in when I am in such an environment; and 2) it is really easy to see which common anglo-american facial features are English-heritage derived. This provides some fun discussion during the interminable wait, because of course we missed our connecting flight due to the delays, and of course there was no other flight to Tel Aviv until 10:30 that night.

One last thing we noticed before Steve got sleep and I end this tale of the first leg of the journey, that probably feels about as long to read as the flight took…

My goodness, did the British cops ever swing the other way on the whole weapons issue. Gone are the days of no guns and big sticks. They have gone to the opposite extreme, with extra-thick Kevlar jackets, two to THREE guns each, the old reliable big stick, a taser-looking thing, a mace-looking cannister…I could go on. They look like the bad army action figurines popular in the 1980s. Creepy.

Nap time.