Wee Wee Wee, All the Way Home
I'm home! It was arduous, and next time I fly internationally I'd like to be wealthy enough to fly first class. Now on to the post, in which there will be Welcome Rests, Forgotten Sandwiches, Gay Scotland Yard Detectives, Unattended Luggage, Angry Seatmates, Dubious Immigration Inspectors, Imaginary Friends, Smuggled Biological Imports, and Other Sundries of International Travel.
Saturday night/Sunday morning DK and I slept from 0200 to 0330, then got up, did the last bits of packing, and piled into his incredibly tiny white car for the drive to Heathrow. We left at 0400 and stopped at a truck stop called "Welcome Rest" or something like that about halfway, and bought car snacks, including a couple of sandwiches for me as we'd discovered that we'd left half the sandwiches we'd prepared for the journey in DK's fridge. I hadn't realized he'd packed two bags, one for me and one for himself, so I grabbed only his bag, which had "coronation chicken" sandwiches - a British curry chicken salad, which I can't eat on account of the pepper-containing curry - and left my egg-n-bacon and tuna-n-sweet corn sandwiches behind.
Not to worry, though, Welcome Rest had tuna-n-sweet corn sandwiches, and egg-n-cress sandwiches. I got one of each, and I must say, the Brits are on to something with this putting of sweet corn into tuna sandwiches. Next time I make tuna salad (which DK says is not salad, since it has no salad leaves) I shall include corn.
Anyway, refueled and with snacks, we continued the drive, enjoying conversation the whole way. I had my last Irn Bru in the car, too. Irn Bru, for those that don't know, is a Scottish soda, anti-freeze orange in hue, sweet-spicy-fruity in flavor. It's one of those melange flavors, like Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper, which is brewed up from a lot of ingredients and hard to describe. It bears a very vague resemblance to birch beer, but it's definitely not birch beer. Honestly, I wish they'd market it in the US. It's the number one selling soft drink in Scotland, outstripping both Coke and Pepsi, and apparently as old, invented in 1901 in Falkirk, Scotland.
We got to Heathrow at 0800, found remarkably convenient parking, and went in to check me in. I paid £30 to upgrade to a "more leg room" coach seat, since the regular seat I'd had on my flight to the UK had had me with my knees up my nose the whole way, and £40 (outrageous!) to check a second bag full of books and presents, which, alas, arrived somewhat squished. I declined to pay £999 for an upgrade to "upper class", but... Man, maybe some day. Then we hung around the airport and talked until I really had to go through security or risk missing my flight. We both did an excellent job of manfully holding back any tears as we hugged goodbye.
Security was, as security always is, a minor hassle. There's the anxious feeling that you are holding up the line while you get your laptop out of your carry-on and put it in a separate tray, then assemble a tray for your shoes, belt (why do they need to x-ray your belt separately?) coat, zip-top bag of under three ounces of dangerously moist things like eye-drops and hand cream and lip balm, and finally dump your pocket contents and shuffle shoeless and loose-waisted through the metal detector. Then, holding up your falling-down pants, you wait for your things to emerge from the x-ray and reassemble everything, while the people behind you in line glare daggers at you.
Once through security, I finally found a monitor to tell me what gate to go to, only it said the gate wouldn't be assigned for another ten minutes. So really, I could have spent that extra ten minutes with DK. I felt cheated and hard done by, having been forced to say goodbye too early and left with only the duty-free shop as consolation. Since I didn't want liquor or cigarettes or overpriced packaged goods or perfume, it was very small consolation.
Better consolation, though, was the cute gay detective in the pink dress shirt and well-cut trousers. He was tall and slim, with dark blond hair and a three-days growth of beard that implied he hadn't slept in his own bed recently. I knew he was a detective because he had ID on a lanyard around his neck that said "New Scotland Yard" and he had a gun and a pair of handcuffs holstered to his belt. He was distractedly watching the departures board with me while I was waiting for my gate to be announced, and then he took off towards security. And okay, I don't really know his sexual orientation, but he certainly pinged my gaydar. I think I may name him Nigel or Cyril and put him in a novel.
I finally found my gate, which was down along a maze of corridors and through a very large posh shopping area full of travelers. There they were checking passports again before letting anyone into a glassed-off gate area. In the line for passport examination, I and a group of British business travelers noticed a pair of suspicious black cases, seemingly abandoned, right next to the line. We made nervous eye contact, and the guys joked with one another about how surely someone must be aware of these things. I thought of a comedy skit DK had shown me, where the comedian was asking when we'd become afraid of unattended packages. He liked the good old days, he said, when if you found an unattended suitcase, you laughed gleefully and took it, finders keepers and all that.
Anyway, when I was getting my passport inspected I mentioned to the gate agent the apparently abandoned cases, and she raised her eyebrow and called another agent over, and then a third agent hurried over to a phone on the wall. No idea what happened to the mystery things after that.
The gate was packed, so packed there was nowhere to sit, so I stood, and then after what seemed like forever, we finally got to get on the plane. My extra leg room seat was definitely better than the regular one, at least in that the seat pitch was about what you'd expect on a normal flight, instead of completely crammed in. The seat width, though, was still far narrower than most US domestic flights, let alone international. I'm accustomed to international coach being more comfortable than domestic, so this really was unusual. Virgin America is lovely, but Virgin Atlantic? Leaves a bit to be desired. It was also one of those seats that slopes too far back, so all the pressure goes on your tailbone. For eleven hours. I sat on a pillow, which helped a little, but not a lot.
I had the window seat, but I was right dead center over the wing, so looking out the window gave me nothing to see but an expanse of aluminum and a sliver of sky. Behind me was a French toddler who was old enough and tall enough to kick my seat, but young enough to cry and have tantrums. He was especially distraught when the entertainment system was turned off about forty-five minutes before we landed, and the Micky Mouse program he'd been watching was gone. I think perhaps I shall have nightmares featuring piercing, French-accented screams of "Micky Moooooouuuuuuuse! Micky Moooooouuuuuuse!"
Sitting next to me was a thin, thirty-something British woman who loathed me. She loathed me with great loathing, for reasons that were entirely unclear. She returned my friendly, "Hello" with a frosty stare, and shot laser bolts of disgust from her eyes the two (two times in eleven hours, can you imagine?!?) times I had to ask her to let me up to use the toilet. I decided she was on her way to the US for a funeral or something, and was completely taken aback when, once we were on the ground in San Francisco and waiting to disembark, she whipped out her cell phone and made a light-hearted, cheerful sounding call to the person, I believe a husband or lover, who was picking her up. She had a resident alien card, too, so evidently she was returning home and not unhappy about it. The entire flight the waves of hate from her were palpable, and when, as I got my coat down from the overhead it caused a breeze that ruffled her hair, she tried once more to kill me with a glare-o-doom.
I'm gonna guess she was hating me either for my size (I fit in the seat without touching her, but with no particular room to spare), my lack of gender conformity, my blue hair, my obvious Americanness, and/or the fact that I had to shift around several times when the pressure on my tailbone from the spinal torture seats became unbearable. (Maybe Virgin Atlantic is in cahoots with unscrupulous chiropractors at their major destinations?) Or maybe she was afraid she'd catch The Gay from me.
The immigration inspector asked why I'd been in the UK (vacation, visiting friends and family), and actually asked a few follow on questions (Had I actually traveled alone? Uh, yes? I was visiting friends over there. How long had I been gone? Three weeks. Careful checking of the date stamped on my passport for my entry visa to the UK to confirm that) but he was friendly about it. I guess letting a suspiciously queer American back into San Francisco is less alarming than letting one into the UK. Wait, did I forget to write about that? On the way in, the UK immigration officer was very dubious about me.
Officer: What is the purpose of your visit to the United Kingdom?
Me: Vacation. I'm visiting some friends.
Officer: What "friends"? Where do these "friends" live? (you could hear the air quotes around the word friends.)
Me: Uh, well, I'll be staying with a friend in Huddersfield, and visiting some cousins in London-
Officer: Friends or cousins, which is it?!
Me: Uh... Both? Friends in Huddersfield and Edinburgh, and cousins in London, I-
Officer: How long have you known these "friends"? Have you ever met them in person?
Me: *sweating* A, uh, a long time? Several years? And yes, we've met before. One friend was over to the U.S. last Christmas, and I was at my cousin's wedding in Glasgow a few years ago.
Officer: How long are you staying?
Me: Three weeks? About three weeks? I go back on February thirteenth. Really.
By the time she finally decided I wasn't a threat to Her Majesty's Government, I was about to start swearing oaths that I had friends and pets and a life in San Francisco and I really was planning to return, I swear, I just wanted to have a small vacation.
Anyway, the American immigration officers were more suspicious than I remembered from the last time I went out of the country, too, though less unfriendly than the Brits. Ultimately I was allowed back into the country. I even smuggled in a pork pie, which I'd meant to eat on the plane, but had been too afraid of disturbing Angry!Seatmate to get up and get out of my bag in the overhead. You're not supposed to bring in meat products. My plan was to, if caught, express surprise that I'd forgotten it was there, and eat it on the spot.
The customs and immigration form also asks if you're bringing in any biological samples. I didn't declare it, but in fact I've imported some viruses. I was having slight sniffles on departure from Heathrow; by the time we landed I had a fever and a full on cold. My awesome friend Wayne picked me up at the airport, and then I came home. I found flowers here from one of my rat sitters, and was enthusiastically greeted with love from the rats, and then I pretty much went straight to bed even though it was only 1530 local time.
And now it's a new day. I have a cold, and I'm home, and thanks to being sick, I slept enough that I'm pretty much back on California time already. When I woke this morning, I rolled in the bed and was surprised DK wasn't there (we shared his big bed the whole time I was there.) It's a little sad, but he's moving here in a few months, so that will be awesome.
Next time I have an eleven hour flight, though, I really hope I have the money to fly first class. Or at least on an airline with a nicer coach class.
Saturday night/Sunday morning DK and I slept from 0200 to 0330, then got up, did the last bits of packing, and piled into his incredibly tiny white car for the drive to Heathrow. We left at 0400 and stopped at a truck stop called "Welcome Rest" or something like that about halfway, and bought car snacks, including a couple of sandwiches for me as we'd discovered that we'd left half the sandwiches we'd prepared for the journey in DK's fridge. I hadn't realized he'd packed two bags, one for me and one for himself, so I grabbed only his bag, which had "coronation chicken" sandwiches - a British curry chicken salad, which I can't eat on account of the pepper-containing curry - and left my egg-n-bacon and tuna-n-sweet corn sandwiches behind.
Not to worry, though, Welcome Rest had tuna-n-sweet corn sandwiches, and egg-n-cress sandwiches. I got one of each, and I must say, the Brits are on to something with this putting of sweet corn into tuna sandwiches. Next time I make tuna salad (which DK says is not salad, since it has no salad leaves) I shall include corn.
Anyway, refueled and with snacks, we continued the drive, enjoying conversation the whole way. I had my last Irn Bru in the car, too. Irn Bru, for those that don't know, is a Scottish soda, anti-freeze orange in hue, sweet-spicy-fruity in flavor. It's one of those melange flavors, like Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper, which is brewed up from a lot of ingredients and hard to describe. It bears a very vague resemblance to birch beer, but it's definitely not birch beer. Honestly, I wish they'd market it in the US. It's the number one selling soft drink in Scotland, outstripping both Coke and Pepsi, and apparently as old, invented in 1901 in Falkirk, Scotland.
We got to Heathrow at 0800, found remarkably convenient parking, and went in to check me in. I paid £30 to upgrade to a "more leg room" coach seat, since the regular seat I'd had on my flight to the UK had had me with my knees up my nose the whole way, and £40 (outrageous!) to check a second bag full of books and presents, which, alas, arrived somewhat squished. I declined to pay £999 for an upgrade to "upper class", but... Man, maybe some day. Then we hung around the airport and talked until I really had to go through security or risk missing my flight. We both did an excellent job of manfully holding back any tears as we hugged goodbye.
Security was, as security always is, a minor hassle. There's the anxious feeling that you are holding up the line while you get your laptop out of your carry-on and put it in a separate tray, then assemble a tray for your shoes, belt (why do they need to x-ray your belt separately?) coat, zip-top bag of under three ounces of dangerously moist things like eye-drops and hand cream and lip balm, and finally dump your pocket contents and shuffle shoeless and loose-waisted through the metal detector. Then, holding up your falling-down pants, you wait for your things to emerge from the x-ray and reassemble everything, while the people behind you in line glare daggers at you.
Once through security, I finally found a monitor to tell me what gate to go to, only it said the gate wouldn't be assigned for another ten minutes. So really, I could have spent that extra ten minutes with DK. I felt cheated and hard done by, having been forced to say goodbye too early and left with only the duty-free shop as consolation. Since I didn't want liquor or cigarettes or overpriced packaged goods or perfume, it was very small consolation.
Better consolation, though, was the cute gay detective in the pink dress shirt and well-cut trousers. He was tall and slim, with dark blond hair and a three-days growth of beard that implied he hadn't slept in his own bed recently. I knew he was a detective because he had ID on a lanyard around his neck that said "New Scotland Yard" and he had a gun and a pair of handcuffs holstered to his belt. He was distractedly watching the departures board with me while I was waiting for my gate to be announced, and then he took off towards security. And okay, I don't really know his sexual orientation, but he certainly pinged my gaydar. I think I may name him Nigel or Cyril and put him in a novel.
I finally found my gate, which was down along a maze of corridors and through a very large posh shopping area full of travelers. There they were checking passports again before letting anyone into a glassed-off gate area. In the line for passport examination, I and a group of British business travelers noticed a pair of suspicious black cases, seemingly abandoned, right next to the line. We made nervous eye contact, and the guys joked with one another about how surely someone must be aware of these things. I thought of a comedy skit DK had shown me, where the comedian was asking when we'd become afraid of unattended packages. He liked the good old days, he said, when if you found an unattended suitcase, you laughed gleefully and took it, finders keepers and all that.
Anyway, when I was getting my passport inspected I mentioned to the gate agent the apparently abandoned cases, and she raised her eyebrow and called another agent over, and then a third agent hurried over to a phone on the wall. No idea what happened to the mystery things after that.
The gate was packed, so packed there was nowhere to sit, so I stood, and then after what seemed like forever, we finally got to get on the plane. My extra leg room seat was definitely better than the regular one, at least in that the seat pitch was about what you'd expect on a normal flight, instead of completely crammed in. The seat width, though, was still far narrower than most US domestic flights, let alone international. I'm accustomed to international coach being more comfortable than domestic, so this really was unusual. Virgin America is lovely, but Virgin Atlantic? Leaves a bit to be desired. It was also one of those seats that slopes too far back, so all the pressure goes on your tailbone. For eleven hours. I sat on a pillow, which helped a little, but not a lot.
I had the window seat, but I was right dead center over the wing, so looking out the window gave me nothing to see but an expanse of aluminum and a sliver of sky. Behind me was a French toddler who was old enough and tall enough to kick my seat, but young enough to cry and have tantrums. He was especially distraught when the entertainment system was turned off about forty-five minutes before we landed, and the Micky Mouse program he'd been watching was gone. I think perhaps I shall have nightmares featuring piercing, French-accented screams of "Micky Moooooouuuuuuuse! Micky Moooooouuuuuuse!"
Sitting next to me was a thin, thirty-something British woman who loathed me. She loathed me with great loathing, for reasons that were entirely unclear. She returned my friendly, "Hello" with a frosty stare, and shot laser bolts of disgust from her eyes the two (two times in eleven hours, can you imagine?!?) times I had to ask her to let me up to use the toilet. I decided she was on her way to the US for a funeral or something, and was completely taken aback when, once we were on the ground in San Francisco and waiting to disembark, she whipped out her cell phone and made a light-hearted, cheerful sounding call to the person, I believe a husband or lover, who was picking her up. She had a resident alien card, too, so evidently she was returning home and not unhappy about it. The entire flight the waves of hate from her were palpable, and when, as I got my coat down from the overhead it caused a breeze that ruffled her hair, she tried once more to kill me with a glare-o-doom.
I'm gonna guess she was hating me either for my size (I fit in the seat without touching her, but with no particular room to spare), my lack of gender conformity, my blue hair, my obvious Americanness, and/or the fact that I had to shift around several times when the pressure on my tailbone from the spinal torture seats became unbearable. (Maybe Virgin Atlantic is in cahoots with unscrupulous chiropractors at their major destinations?) Or maybe she was afraid she'd catch The Gay from me.
The immigration inspector asked why I'd been in the UK (vacation, visiting friends and family), and actually asked a few follow on questions (Had I actually traveled alone? Uh, yes? I was visiting friends over there. How long had I been gone? Three weeks. Careful checking of the date stamped on my passport for my entry visa to the UK to confirm that) but he was friendly about it. I guess letting a suspiciously queer American back into San Francisco is less alarming than letting one into the UK. Wait, did I forget to write about that? On the way in, the UK immigration officer was very dubious about me.
Officer: What is the purpose of your visit to the United Kingdom?
Me: Vacation. I'm visiting some friends.
Officer: What "friends"? Where do these "friends" live? (you could hear the air quotes around the word friends.)
Me: Uh, well, I'll be staying with a friend in Huddersfield, and visiting some cousins in London-
Officer: Friends or cousins, which is it?!
Me: Uh... Both? Friends in Huddersfield and Edinburgh, and cousins in London, I-
Officer: How long have you known these "friends"? Have you ever met them in person?
Me: *sweating* A, uh, a long time? Several years? And yes, we've met before. One friend was over to the U.S. last Christmas, and I was at my cousin's wedding in Glasgow a few years ago.
Officer: How long are you staying?
Me: Three weeks? About three weeks? I go back on February thirteenth. Really.
By the time she finally decided I wasn't a threat to Her Majesty's Government, I was about to start swearing oaths that I had friends and pets and a life in San Francisco and I really was planning to return, I swear, I just wanted to have a small vacation.
Anyway, the American immigration officers were more suspicious than I remembered from the last time I went out of the country, too, though less unfriendly than the Brits. Ultimately I was allowed back into the country. I even smuggled in a pork pie, which I'd meant to eat on the plane, but had been too afraid of disturbing Angry!Seatmate to get up and get out of my bag in the overhead. You're not supposed to bring in meat products. My plan was to, if caught, express surprise that I'd forgotten it was there, and eat it on the spot.
The customs and immigration form also asks if you're bringing in any biological samples. I didn't declare it, but in fact I've imported some viruses. I was having slight sniffles on departure from Heathrow; by the time we landed I had a fever and a full on cold. My awesome friend Wayne picked me up at the airport, and then I came home. I found flowers here from one of my rat sitters, and was enthusiastically greeted with love from the rats, and then I pretty much went straight to bed even though it was only 1530 local time.
And now it's a new day. I have a cold, and I'm home, and thanks to being sick, I slept enough that I'm pretty much back on California time already. When I woke this morning, I rolled in the bed and was surprised DK wasn't there (we shared his big bed the whole time I was there.) It's a little sad, but he's moving here in a few months, so that will be awesome.
Next time I have an eleven hour flight, though, I really hope I have the money to fly first class. Or at least on an airline with a nicer coach class.