In Transit
I am relieved to finally be in London after taking 22 hours to get here from the East Coast. The trip was LONG and obviously made more complicated by the fact that my first flight was cancelled. That, however, didn’t stop me from continuing to have fun with my people watching, even while on the plane.
While I was in the Red Carpet Room in DC I noticed a man who looked like he was in his fifties traveling with his mom who could have been anywhere from 70-85. There was something about the dynamic between them that made me notice them. I’m not sure what it was but the bottom line is I noticed.
When I boarded my flight the son was talking to one of the flight attendants. It looked like he was trying to finagle an upgrade (he was probably shot down like I was by the Red Carpet people). I noticed his ticket said 7A on it, which meant he was already in business class. On United 767’s the new international configuration is great in business. It’s a flat bed. First has a few more toys and the seat is a little wider but I wouldn’t spend the money or the miles to go from business to first on that equipment (that means plane in business ;~) )
I proceeded back to my seat and worked on getting settled. I was disappointed when I arrived at 23C because there was a coat covering 23D and 23E. This most certainly meant that I didn’t have the whole row to myself and it possibly even meant the row would be full. That of course, was my worst nightmare. The guy with the jacket eventually showed up back at his seat. He was a friendly enough fellow and sharing a row with him would have been alright. Unfortunately one of the last passengers to enter the plane came straight to our row. I’m guessing she was seventeen. She was not tiny and not quiet. She was on the phone when she arrived at 23D with her hands full of Wendy’s. Fortunately she didn’t have a ton of luggage. She tried to climb over me, but I quickly offered to get up. I sort of stumbled in the process because she didn’t want to back up out of my personal space to allow me to make room for her. Having a middle seater that is unaware of personal space is NEVER a good thing.
When the flight attendant announced that the door would be closing shortly I started scoping the joint. It happened that the row behind us only had one guy, who was seated directly behind me. My access to the open seat was terrible, so I asked the man in our row if we would be willing to hop back a seat so we could all have open middle. He said he would “just for me”. At this point the girl in the middle offered, after he moves I’ll move to the aisle. Mentally I was thinking, “uhm, yes, that would in fact be the point of me asking him to move and then saying we all COULD HAVE AN OPEN MIDDLE.”
As the doors were closed the nice man jumped back a row and the girl in the middle moved to the aisle. She quickly established, however, that she thought all of the middle seat should be hers by putting all of her reading materials and uneaten Wendy’s on the seat. This was better than having her pillow and elbows in my space like they were two seconds before, so I just counted my blessings and moved on. This was made easier by the fact that my attention was distracted by something else.
There was a relatively cute but short guy sitting alone in the row of 24A&B. I think he was Australian, so the short part (maybe 5’8” would make sense). We “noticed” each other when he got on the plane but I was too tired and he was too short for me to make too much of an effort. As the plane started to taxi out of the gate, however, we shared a moment. The girl in my row who had proceeded to make another phone call of no importance and everyone else on the plane must have been in a trance because the Aussie and I seemed to be the only two people who noticed grandma from the Red Carpet Room walking down the aisle toward us. Keep in mind we are TAXIING on an ACTIVE runway. Usually when a person just stands in his/her seat on active runway a crew member goes nuts on the intercom. They either have terrible sightlines on the 767 or just weren’t paying attention at all because she made it from the first row in coach passed us before I hit my service bell for someone to come and find her. When the flight attendant finally did see her she had a conniption, running up the aisle to guide her back to her seat. I’m still not sure where she was going or what she was looking for. Perhaps it was her son. If so, she was heading the wrong direction since he was in business class.
As soon as the plane took off I put my seat back and fell asleep. I woke up some four hours into the flight to use the facilities. I came back to my seat with a cup of ice I snagged from a flight attendant for a soda I brought from the Red Carpet Room. If you’re wondering why I brought soda on the plane, United doesn’t serve any caffeine free diet soda on international runs. The Red Carpet Room had cans of Dieta Sierra Mist at the ready, so I grabbed two for my flight. After consuming my soda and eating a Luna bar I worked on falling asleep again. My eyes were closed but I wasn’t asleep yet when I got a weird feeling on my leg. I opened my eyes and realized that personal space girl had decided to lie down on the middle seat. Her head was towards me and 90% of her hair was flipped on me. I was wasn’t wild about the idea of her taking the WHOLE middle seat with her stuff, or with her body for that matter, but her hair all over ME really was too much. I did my best to put it out of my mind and fall asleep again. I must have succeeded because the next time I woke up getting hit with an elbow. The thing about this is that it wasn’t the girl from my row that hit me. Evidently she was traveling with other people and invited one of them to sit in our row. When I woke up I also noticed my shoes that were previously sitting under the middle seat were under my legs. Yet again I was annoyed but decided to just internalize it and try to sleep. I succeeded and the next thing I knew we were on our approach to Heathrow.
As I exited the plane one last funny thing happened. As I stepped into the jetway the wandering grandma was taking a seat in a wheelchair. As I walked past I heard her son’s opening words to the pusher of chair. They were simply “Good Luck”. I should have stuck around to hear the follow-up but I was anxious to get on my way.
Customs was fairly uneventful as was getting my luggage. I did experience a little difficulty with the ATMs however. I tried a few of them in the airport and all of my requests were denied. I never use my cash card at home, so before I left the Philly airport I checked to make sure my pin worked. It did, so I found this situation particularly frustrating. I decided that maybe the airport ATMs just didn’t like me and that I would start my adventure without any currency. I purchased a ticket on the “Heathrow Express to Paddington” as instructed by Nicole and was on my way.
At Paddington Station per Nicole I hopped in a cab. Fortunately it wasn’t too hard to find one that accepted Visa. My driver was a super nice guy and that was helpful because Nicole has a weird address. Her address isn’t a street address but rather a “house” or apartment building. It’s easy to find the cross streets but the actual building was harder to spot. On our third pass and after an unsuccessful call to Nicole on the cabbies cellie, he spotted the building. I hopped out and made my way to the front door. The address Nicole had given me was 1 Ridley House. The doorbell box on the wall only listed addresses for numbers 20-40. I wasn’t sure what to do. After much deliberation I decided I would just start ringing flats. I clearly upset a person or two. Not sure if this was because the people were unfriendly Brits or because of the early hour (it was roughly 7:30 am). After unsuccessfully ringing all 20 flats I decided to sit in front of the building on a bench hoping that Nicole might peak out the window looking for me. After a few minutes I decided that plan sucked, so I hauled my stuff over to the London Business School (LBS) to use its phone in an effort to get ahold of Nicole. If it isn’t clear yet, the Blackberry I have doesn’t work in Europe, so I am stuck in the late 80’s / early 90’s as it relates to mobile technology.
There were a few guys working at the main desk in the school and I talked them into letting me use the phone to call Nicole. I dialed and she didn’t answer. I got voicemail but it was of the nondescript variety. I left a message saying I was at LBS and it’d be great if she would just wander over whenever. Within a few minutes I saw Nicole heading across the street. I was relieved to have found my “home” for the next few days and am looking forward to taking a nap…
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