There and Back Again

Listening to: Miniature Disasters (KT Tunstall)
Pondering: I’d like to fly. Then I wouldn’t have to wait in airport security lines. (Jim Morris)

I am sitting here in my hotel room in London, near the Victoria Train Station. I am writing in my laptop because my handwriting, of late has been miserable. I am freshly showered and listening to KT Tunstall’s song, Miniature Disasters. It’s 9:45 PM, British Summer Time. Seventeen odd some hours ago, I thought I would never make it to London. I thought my flight from San Francisco to London Heathrow was never going to end.

It started with a delay. What was supposed to be a flight leaving SFO at 4:00 PM became a flight that boarded at 9:10 PM and left the gate in San Francisco at 10:45 PM. It was the longest wait I’ve had for a flight. My sister and I even managed to hop back on a BART Train, get off on the third stop and get home after checking-in our bags. I managed a short nap and a bit of BBC’s ShakespeaRe Told, starring the lovely James McElvoy as a modern-day Macbeth.

Then, just a few hours after Virgin Atlantic’s crew served and took away a blah dinner of chicken and pasta and lukewarm water and just after I finished a round of online Soduku, the worst part of the flight started. We hit turbulence of the worst kind. Good thing I skimmed on the chicken and pasta. I could hear the aches and pains of the airplane every time it got hit and I could feel it shake and dip and shake again. At one point, I even heard the pots and pans falling off their place in the specially designed airline cupboard. And worst of all, I could hear and feel my sister’s fear. She was a miniature disaster all on her own, the poor girl! I don’t think she’s ever been that scared before. I felt so sorry for her.

This went on and off from Ontario, Canada all the way to Greenland. (I know because I was watching Virgin Atlantic’s iMap, which showed the progress of the trip.) Through it all I was more scared about throwing up from the motion and more scared for my sister, really. I told her to pray and I don’t know if she did but I know I did. I must have prayed enough Hail Marys and enough Our Fathers to save a few sad souls in purgatory (if that’s even possible). I prayed harder every time I looked at “time elapsed” on the iMap screen and it reminded me the flight still had 5 hours to go.

When we finally got off the airplane, I was ecstatic - glad to be rid of the awful, awful experience. I thought the disastrous trip was over. Instead, I had to wait another hour for my luggage, walk about half a mile (was it?) to the Underground, transfer to another train after 30 minutes and stand on a crowded train all the way to Victoria.

But all is well that ends well. I am finally here and ready to begin my holiday. Tomorrow will be a better day, I am sure of it. I will try to blog every day, but we’ll see how that goes.

In closing, I say cheers to turbulent flights, Speed of Sound (Coldplay’s hit which was playing in the airplane when we boarded, and was playing again when we de-planed), London’s underground, and most of all to my dear sister!