I was awake just before my alarm went off at 5:45am. Staggering into the shower, I woke up enough to shave and ensure all my bags were packed before climbing into the car and driving off towards the airport. I was on Highway 101 just after 6am, and for reference the road was what I would call "pretty quiet". Finding the San Bruno turn-off just north of the airport was no trouble at all, and I'd parked the car in the Avis return lot by 6:20am.
The rental car shuttle took me to the North Terminal, from which American Airlines do all their flying. I was looking at a three hour wait, so decided to check my baggage in at least and have less to carry around.
In the event, the check-in clerk was unfailingly helpful and got me onto the 7:40am departure to DFW rather than the 9:35am departure on which I'd been booked. So I'd say that American Airlines are definitely worth a look if you are trying for good service. I had half an hour to wait before boarding, so used that to wrap myself around a coffee and wake up.
The aircraft we took to DFW was a McDonall Douglas MD-80, a fairly old jet but at least they must have found most of the software bugs by now. We took off on time, into a clear blue sky with the sun rising in the east. The view over and around the Bay as we banked left was absolutely stunning, and I was fortunate enough to have a window seat on the right side of the aircraft so that I could get the most out of it.
We headed south down the coastline, and from 15,000 feet or so it was easy to pick out the route I'd taken all the way down to Monterey. The mountains of Big Sur were clearly visible, and the middle third of the area was snow-capped; the captain remarked that this was pretty unusual. I idly wondered which one was Manuel Peak, but it was pretty hard to work out distances accurately enough.
The captain commented that the Dallas weather was currently not so good; a weather system was coming up from the Gulf so visibility wasn't great, but it was around 70F which to me is comfortably warm.
The plane turned east to run just north of the Mojave; I believe I spotted the fairly distinctive shape of Mt. San Jacinto, but could have been mistaken. Then it was time to settle down with a book until we got to Dallas.
Dallas Fort Worth Terminal C seemed relatively compact and efficient; I had my bags within five minutes of entering the terminal, and was on the rental car shuttle in another five. Avis had a 2-door Chevy Cavalier waiting for me, and I took it clockwise around Dallas on Interstate 635, after the statutory footling around getting my bearings.
The Dallas weather was a noticeable contrast to California; warm (about 70F), heavily overcast and surprisingly muggy. The car interior was quite uncomfortable until I figured out how to get the ventilation working. Apparently a weather front was going to keep the weather like this for Thursday too; I hoped for a clearer and brighter weekend for a bit of hiking.
Dallas traffic was heavy at times but kept moving, and once I swung out east onto I-30 thinned out loads. The preponderance of pickup tracks matched everything that I'd been told about Texas (and up to now had taken to be American humour).
Driving was comfortable as the speed limit rose to 70, and if I felt like it then Texarkana was only a couple of hours away. However my stomach reminded me that all it had been fed today was an omlette, so at a handy junction I found a combination of general store and restaurant, part of the "Cracker Barrel" chain, and explored new culinary delights.
Grape soda I can recommend (frink!) though note that despite appearances you can twist off the bottle top rather than needing an opener. Corn bread is pretty good. Deep-fried breaded okra is strange but grew on me. Country-fried steak was a bit tough to get into, but the taste was fine. I think that the next week is going to keep my stomach and taste buds very happy indeed...
At one point off the interstate the road crossed a set of train tracks. As I approached, the barriers went down and the lights flashed, so I stopped and waited for the train. Sure enough, along it came, followed by flatbed transporters carrying containers. On and on and on... There was so much train that I started looking around for hidden cameras in case this was some elaborate"You've Been Framed" stunt. Should have guessed by now that everything in Texas is big...
Finding a motel for the night wasn't too hard. I didn't have the energy to explore Texas bars or eateries so opted for a hot bath, called my friend Lee to confirm lunch tomorrow, then read a bit and watched TV. 8pm posed a moral crisis initially, with Voyager and Sex And The City competing, but fortunately SATC was an episode I'd seen already so I enjoyed 7th season Voyager "The Void" instead. Only 9 more episodes before the season finale, apparently.
The weather forecast was for a very wet day tomorrow, with temperatures dropping, but sun was forecast for the weekend so I could get some good hikes in. Now to find the corresponding trails.
After a relatively late rising, I bimbled down Highway 69 to Mineola. The road was an easy drive, though it was a little disconcerting to be driving at 70 on a regular 2-lane road. I noticed that Texas had the stunningly intelligent stipulation that maximum night speed be less than maximum day speed (65 rather than 70).
Texas towns along Highway 69 were a little strange in construction. You'd see populations in the low hundreds on the city limits sign, then a bundle of stores, eateries and gas stations along the sides of the road, then maybe one or two ranch-style houses set back from the road, then the city limits sign again. I guessed most people lived off the side roads.
Mineola was slightly larger, and you could tell that this was a town with people in it. The stores on the edge of town gave way to a wide road lined with houses in a wide range of styles. Very few were two-storey but they all looked tasteful and the town had a generally attractive appearance.
Parking in town, I went to get my hair cut and the hairdresser, after deducing that I wasn't local ("Ya not from these parts, are ya?") regaled me with tales of the local poisonous wildlife, lawyers excepted. The three dangerous snakes around are apparently the copperhead (prone to come into town in the summer months, smells like cucumber), the well-loved rattlesnake, and the water moccasin. This last one is aggressive and will actually chase you. She recounted the story of finding a 4-foot rattler outside the shop the other summer; business had been real slow all that day and she couldn't figure why until she looked outside... Apparently rattlers are protected, so they had to get Animal Control to remove it rather than blow it away with a shotgun. Her sister had bisected a copperhead on her porch with a hoe. Respect.
Just after 11am I went into the library to find my friend Lee, the Mineola library suprema. She was in a board meeting, but her deputy, Judy, a Texan lady with a smile a mile wide and a classic Texas accent, made me tea and introduced me to the library cats Cleo and Willa. Willa was perched on the cabinet in Lee's office and wasn't in a hurry to come down, but the older and infirm Cleo was quite happy to have her head scratched and roll over to have her tummy tickled. A good job if you can get it.
Lee finally escaped from the Board meeting and appeared, looking no older but a little more relaxed and wiser than when last I saw her. She had even managed to avoid picking up any Texas accent, according to Judy. After introducing me to the rest of her companions-in-arms, she showed me around the library.
For such a small town, Mineola's library is remarkably comprehensive. It has the usual fiction, non-fiction and children's books that you'd expect, but also loans videos, has a supply of IRS forms, and (surprising to me) a very impressive set of resources for geneology research; bundles of microfiche, but also books such as tax records, census returns, family histories and memoirs. I hadn't ever seen that in an English library, though Lee informed me that it was because I hadn't been looking hard enough...
The big problem in the library currently was a leaky roof. Several large containers and long hoses were stacked under the main leak source, a skylight, to route the worst of the water out the door, but the roof needed to be completely replaced which would be likely to cost up to $70,000. Fortunately a lot of people were pushing to support Lee's rebuilding of the library, but this coming summer was going to be an organisational challenge.
Lee collected Tom and Betty, two of the Board members, and we went down to the town's burger cafe which did a very tasty set of burgers. The waitresses here left me in no doubt that Texas drawls were quite real, no just put on for tourists. Talking to Lee, Tom and Betty was fascinating; any last prejudice that Texas was full of ignorant rednecks was rapidly buried. Tom was a writer who spent Septembers hiking in the Lake District with his wife, and Betty had only been in Mineola for 4 years but, as far as I could tell, knew everything about everyone here. We visited Betty's sister in the Mineola Civic Center and she suggested places to visit over the next few days, as well as presenting me with a bumper sticker "Don't Mess With Texas", the unofficial state motto.
Tom insisted that we stop in "Kitchens", a deli and hardware store (really!) to try their blackberry cobbler and ice cream. I can definitely recommend a visit to this place if you're travelling within 60 miles of Mineola.
Back at the library I met a couple of the high school pages who help out the regular staff, including Shane who had all the Texan stuff; boots, jeans, heavy belt buckle and a black Stetson. He carried it all off very well, convincing me that I shouldn't even think about getting a Stetson until I had his self-confidence.
Betty drove Lee and I around Mineola and its environs in a "windshield tour", showing us the massive range of house styles, the way that the town had built up, the estate where she and her husband lived (developed around a lake, absolutely stunning even in the rain), the outlying communities and the key parts of town like the rail station, the rail hotel (changing hands faster than a hot potato), and giving the lowdown on how the town actually worked. Details elided to preclude legal action for slander, but it was clear that Betty had her fingers on the pulse of Mineola.
I met two more of Lee's pages, Laurie and Rebecca. Lee told me that Rebecca had been quite disappointed to find out that "Y'all" wasn't technically a word. I can sympathise; the number of times in my life when a plural second person pronoun would have been handy is quite high..
Lee took me in convoy to her apartment in Tyler; Tyler's much bigger and less pretty than Mineola, but Lee's place was right on the edge by the university and in quite pleasant surroundings. After unpacking we visited Lee's buddy Sarah, a true Texas gal, and her husband and father. We fell to discussing Sarah's great-granddad who had come over to Galveston from England around 1884, and Sarah's efforts to find out more about him. We managed to finger Liverpool or Southampton as likely departure points, but ran up hard against a lack of information when we tried to narrow it down further.
Lee and Sarah had done a pecan pie exchange deal, so Lee had cooked three pies for Sarah's house earlier in the week, and Sarah traded back a pie for me to try. After dinner with Lee I had a slice, and can report that all pecan pies in England are as cardboard compared to the real thing. The pecan nuts were sweet and textured, the pastry was great, and the filling wasn't the heavy sticky treacly stuff I'd had up to now but instead was light, fluffy and astonishingly tasty. Only immense self-restraint stopped me dying of pecan overdose.
Lee and I then swapped stories until well in the night; there was a lot to catch up on!
Lee's an early bird (an owl, in fact) and had already done her shopping, had breakfast and typed up a set of minutes before I emerged from bed at 8:30. The sky was still grey, so we decided on a visit to the Kilgore oil museum.
I drove us the 30-odd miles to Kilgore along Route 31. Betty had told me yesterday about the phenomenon of "dry" vs. "wet" counties ("dry" ones ban the sale of alcohol in liquor stores) and it was fascinating to see that as soon as we got over the county line there were rows of liquor stores and purveyors of, ahem, "adult" merchandise.
The oil museum itself was marked by a large drilling derrick outside. The first part of the exhibits laid the scene for the start of oil exploration, and was fairly static; I was starting to think that it was quite a small museum until we came to a door leading to a recreation of an oil town's main street; shops, people, mules, mud and the sound of drilling in the background, it was very well done. Each shop's interior was recreated as realistically as possible. One very nice touch was that some mannequins talked, and had talking faces projected from inside their head so that, while not mistakable for a real person, it was an extra bit of realism.
In the movie theater they had a film showing the story of the start of the oil years including the perils of drilling and the trials of living. The concluding illustration of an oil gusher starting was excellent.
An "elevator ride" down to the oil-bearing layer under the earth was narrated by the marionnette Professor Rockbottom, showing how the strata changed as you get deeper. One thing I didn't know was that the oil didn't occur in huge blobs; instead the "Woodbine sand" was a suspension of sand in oil.
The gift shop had a guide to the Texas language which I was very tempted to buy. According to Lee the trick is to add syllables whereever you can. So "I'm from England" would be "Ahya aam frayam Ingerlaand".
We had lunch at the Country Ranch which is famed for its barbecue ribs ("barbecue is a food group, not an activity"). The ribs were excellent, I have to admit. The restaurant had a wall covered with signed photos of the famous who'd eaten there; Larry "J.R." Hagman and George Bush Sr. featured prominently.
Tyler Zoo was our next port of call. It had not the widest range of animals, but concentrated on doing a few things well. I was disappointed not to see an armadillo or large hairy spider, but they had an excellent collection of venomous snakes (Leekept me between her and the glass), a range of big cats, bison, zebra, colobus monkeys, an alligator... The wildlife may have been a bit cold, since it was overcast and chilly, but the zoo is definitely worth a look.
We had dinner at Dwayne's, where I had a chicken fried steak which was excellent. I also tried pinto beans which were pretty good, and tasted quite like baked beans without the tomato.
After breakfast I said goodbye to Lee and drove off down south towards the state forests. I went through Davy Crockett forest, skirted around Crockett, had a Texas Burger lunch at Madisonville, then headed south on I-45 to Huntsville and the Sam Houston state forest. By now we were under a proper Texas sky; bright blue stretching from horizon to horizon with a burning sun, though it was a sight less warm than a Southern summer.
The Huntsville state park was based around a large lake, and the main hiking trail which I took looped around it. Most of the trees were bare, with dead leaves underfoot, but there was enough green undergrowth to make the forest appealing to the eye. The trail crossed the swampy area at the north end of the lake which gave me a fair idea of what a bayou looks like.
The trees on the west side of the lake changed to evergreens, and then the trail reached the edge of the lake and presented a lovely view across it. In warmer weather it would have been a superb picnic spot; as it was, I had a three minute stop to chug down water and trail mix.
The trail eventually came all the way back to the nature centre where I'd parked the car, and I changed out of my hike gear before heading back onto I-45 and heading north. In the still-bright evening sunshine I drove on along the broad straight road for a couple of hours before it reached the loop road around Dallas. I joined I-20 westbound then came off at junction 463 to get a room at the Motel 6 there.
For dinner I went to Denny's around the corner and got a T-bone steak and Oreo cookie pie dinner while typing up my travelogue. I looked at the map and thought I'd try a drive up to the Eisenhower state park on the Oklahome border tomorrow.
Had a bizarre phone call around 3am; I think it was the duty clerk trying to give an alarm call to the room next door, since I think I heard them leaving shortly after. But I could have been dreaming.
At 9am I took Charlie (the Chevy) up around Dallas and onto I-35, then east onto 121 heading up towards the Oklahoma border. Breakfast was at the Corrall Grill, where they had an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet for $6. I didn't really do it justice, judging by the determined mastication and frequent returns to the counter of my fellow patrons, but had a good pile of bacon, scrambled egg and Texan toast plus a waffle and cherry preserve. Fine fare.
The drive up to the border on Highway 75 took just under 40 minutes, and I turned off into Eisenhower State Park. Like several others I'd seen this was set on a lakeside, the lake in question being Lake Texahoma (derivation of name left as an exercise for the reader). It was clearly set up to cater to the watersports and barbecue crowd, but was pretty much deserted.
I changed into hiking gear and started off on the hiking trail, the first section of which was a nature trail with 20 markers, and a trail guide indicated what was at each marker. Most of the plants and trees were hard to distinguish due to a lack of leaves, but there was an unexpected bonus as three or four large deer suddenly scampered away nearby. Later on a small grey bird ran out through the underrgrowth at an impressive speed; a roadrunner, maybe? Still didn't see an armadillo.
The trail was a bit eerie; all the grey wood, dead leaves and silence around made for a strange atmosphere. It was also pretty wet, with my footsteps marked by a series of squelches. Clearly a lot of rain had fallen recently; indeed, the lake had risen high enough to cover a short section of the trail necessitating a certain amount of furbling around in the bushes to get around it.
Reaching the end of the 4-mile trail took just under an hour and a half. I stood and looked out over the lake to Oklahoma, but it didn't look an awful lot different to Texas. The beach and fishing platforms were underwater, and some ice was left on the steps down to the beach; I nearly went A over T on the way down.
Returning to the car and changing back to civvies, I drove over the Red River to Oklahoma just so that I could say that I'd been there (adding OK to my state collection of CA, TX, NJ, NY, PN, MA, ME and RI) then drove back on Highway 75 and across on Route 121.
I stopped at the Stonebriar Center shopping mall about halfway along 121 for a bit of consumer hedonism. First visit was of course Barnes and Noble and its coffeeshop; I stood at the top of the escalators and inhaled the scent of thousands and thousands of books. There's something about a large bookshop that makes me slightly giddy. I'm something of a quester after knowledge, and even allowing for Sturgeon's Law that leaves an awful lot of good books in the store, stuffed full of knowledge. It's a fantasy of mine to walk into a store like this one day and buy it, not as a going concern but as a dwelling, all stock included. I'd never get any work done again...
In the event I ended up with four books; Neal Stephenson's "In the beginning was the command line", Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason", Tim Berners-Lee's "Weaving the Web" and Jeri Taylor's "Star Trek Voyager: Mosaic". Fairly restrained, all things considered; I remembered in time that I had to carry all these books when I was looking at more weighty tomes. I tried not to think about where there was shelf space for them back home...
Ambling around the rest of the mall was a reminder of just how big things were over here. The mall even had its own ice rink! It was surprisingly busy for a Sunday afternoon, though trade seemed to be tailing off by around 5 p.m. when I came out. By then wispy cloud had started to cover the sky, but the semi-setting sun made it a pretty view.
Lewisville, at the junction of 121 and I-35, was the night's stopover. I went for the Super-8 in order to get some variety, and had a reasonably comfortable room. First thing to do was to repack my bags so that a) all my stuff fitted in and b) all the fetid hiking gear was together in my rucksack. Exhausted by the effort I surfed TV for a bit, then sauntered out looking for food.
The Waffle House was nearest, and I went for my hard-core favourite of steak, eggs, hash browns and coffee. It appeared quickly, tasted good and came to under seven bucks so there really wasn't any room for complaint. My Psion drew some comment ("sweet!"), I guess because Americans are used to palmtops not coming with keyboards.
For the first time I saw a guy answering a mobile phone in the restaurant; his ring tone was conventional, at least, though I wonder how much longer until America is blighted by the curse of programmable ring tones. I swear, one of these days the owner of a phone with a particularly annoying tone is going to find out just how it sounds when muffled by his bowels. Really. Phones aren't that big these days, it wouldn't be hard to get it in, I'm sure. And I can't see any jury these days convicting me of actual bodily harm. Unless I get twelve mobile phone nerds, of course.
Returning to the motel, I surfed TV again with disappointing results, so curled up with Neal Stephenson for a while.
I'm really starting to go sour on pickups. Some asshole was revving his engine outside at a very unsociable time of the morning, on and off for entirely too long. Only the suspicion that his vehicle would come equipped with shotgun kept me from questioning his parentage.
President's Day today, so most everyone was off work and hence the roads were reasonably quiet. I took Charlie onto 121 south, and in no time at all (well, fifteen minutes) we were at the edge of DFW. I relearned the lesson that when you see a sign for what section you want, it won't be giving you any warning; you just have to go straight for it. For reference, the rental car center sign is light blue and it is pretty much the first turnoff to the right when you approach the airport from the north, before you've even gone through the toll plaza.
Anyhow, I faffed around until I was on the correct road and got taken five miles into the airport before the rental car center appeared in person. I parked up, said goodbye to Charlie who had been a faithful companion, and took the bus to Terminal C.
This time I wasn't massively early, so checked in for my originally planned flight (12:34 departure) and wandered through into the gates section. DFW was reasonably well provided with eateries and other shops; not in the same league as Heathrow but quite fine for domestic purposes. I was quite surprised to see a W.H.Smith here; is this their attempt to break into the big time? I'd guess that Barnes and Noble and Borders might have something to say about that.
The terminal was markedly more busy than it had been when I arrived. Presumably people were flying back from a long weekend with relatives or loved ones. I wondered idly what the nation was actually celebrating today. A cheap crack about Presidential assassinations sprang to mind, but I held it back.
Thinking back to before the start of my holiday, I could only remember it very vaguely. A dark and rainy M3, the stress of packing, closing off business at work - they all seemed a very long time ago. Yet in three days I'll have finished a full day at work and be getting ready to go out and get my arse kicked at Tae Kwon Do.
We boarded the American Airlines Super-80 just after midday, as per schedule, but as our takeoff time approached the captain informed us that due to "weather" in the San Francisco Bay area they were throttling back the traffic and so our takeoff would be delayed. We were allowed back off the plane to stretch our legs for half an hour, then re-boarded and the pilot taxied us to the runway where we held for a while. We finally left at 2:45 or so, just over two hours late. However the cabin crew were very good, kept us informed and provided a steady supply of snackage; there was still general good humour on board which is what counts.
Once flying I finished off Cryptonomicon, which I can wholeheartedly recommend to readers in general and cryptogeeks in particular. It's quite a read - not far off a thousand pages - but well worth the effort. I got chatting with my seat partner who worked for Oracle and was commuting between Dallas and San Francisco fairly regularly; we discussed where to go in Europe for a backpacking vacation, among other things. He gave me the lowdown on tipping protocol, including the point (which I hadn't realised, but which checked out when you do the math) that barkeeps at a good bar can easily get $200-$300 in tips in an evening - tax free! I'm clearly in the wrong job.
The plane touched down at 4:30pm in San Francisco, and the promised cloud and rain was here in spades. Fortunately coming through SFO as a domestic arrival is vastly quicker than international, and we only had five or so minutes lurking in baggage claim before my bags tumbled down the chute. Straining against the weight of all the books, I found a door-to-door shuttle on the top level of the terminal which promised to deliver me to the Atherton for the bargain rate of $14. Hard to argue with that...
The Atherton was as I remembered; an island of civilisation in a sea of purveyors of imaginative public services. After checking in and sorting out a shuttle bus for 1:30 tomorrow, I strolled out in search of some food. Union Square seemed the obvious direction, so I headed on up to Geary (the north edge of the red light district) before going east.
Union Square and its environs were still full of hustle and bustle. I swung by the west and south sides before zeroing in on Jax, a steak house one block south of the square. They offered a filet migon that was entirely too tempting to resist, so I didn't even try. The steak was, in a word, superb, and came with a baked potato approximately the size of Japan, a heap of crisp vegetables and sides of sour cream, onion and bacon bits. Really quite excellent, well worth a look on your next visit to SF.
The walk back to the Atherton was uneventful, though I kept up a fair pace to avoid anyone taking too much of an interest in the contents of my wallet. Though at this stage I'd probably be more pissed off if they went after the Psion.
I felt like a beer so went to the hotel bar. They did a very nice Anchor Porter which went down smoothly; local entertainment was provided by the barkeep and another guy trying to get "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" playing on the TV via a laptop, with eventual success. It was a bit bizarre, hearing the Cantonese semi-dubbed into Mandarin while Kanji and English subtitles hovered on the bottom of the screen, but after a while you barely noticed it and instead were locked solid on the action. Top film, though the flying bits were very reminiscent of Xena: Warrior Princess.
My last day in the U.S., and a long flight ahead which persuaded me to get out and do some walking. I zig-zagged up to California and the Grace Cathedral which was very imposing, solemn and yet quite peaceful. The wall murals were well done, telling the story of the Bay's development as a religious community. The peace was interrupted now and again by the hammering of maintenance work on the outside of the cathedral, but it wasn't too intrusive.
I walked the Labrinth outside the cathedral, then descended Sacramento to the Embarcadero. On the way I saw two elderly Chinese ladies practising Tai Chi in the small park by the cathedral; first time I'd seen such a thing. Briefly tempted to go work through my Tae Kwon Do patterns, but held back.
I walked the length of the Embarcadero to Pier 39, and went to see the sea lions sprawled across the docks. A couple of the younger males were playing a game that looked like sumo, trying to push each other off their pallet and into the water. The bigger bulls were sacked out, wisely conserving their strength. Apparently they first came onto the docks in strength around 1990, and have made it a full-time sea lion haven ever since.
Going back over the hill I took a cable car, though this option wasn't entirely free of manual labour ("gag me with a spoon!"). On the first turn off Powell the car got stuck and three of us got press-ganged into pushing the thing onto the new track. Anyway, it was all good fun, and I hopped off at Union Square without demanding a refund.
Passing over Market, I went to the Metreon to have a look around. I had vague memories of the Microsoft shop being light and airy, which seemed somewhat strange for the lair of the Beast. My memories were accurate, for once; it was all very swish, modern and well laid-out, presumably to hide from the punters the fact that they were selling decades-old technology. I found WinME upgrades for $115, and WinME "for PCs without Windows" for $240. Hello? If I have bought a PC without Windows, which is still a remarkably difficult thing to do, why in the name of little green apples would I want to then inflict WinME on such a PC? Who the hell is Microsoft selling these boxes to? What a bunch of fsckwits.
Having said that, I did end up sending a Microsoft video postcard to Rachel, and bought a PDA case; the case didn't list Psions as compatible in terms of size, for some strange reason, but mine fitted in perfectly. It's a tasteful red, with no MS logo anywhere, and made of Neoprene to absorb shocks and tolerature moisture, so I didn't feel too guilty.
Virgin Megastore demanded my attention on the way back; nothing I spotted that demanded to be bought, but enjoyable browsing nonetheless. I was back at the hotel about 12:30, and read USA Today until the airport shuttle arrived.
The terminal was quiet again, and checking in went smoothly. The departure had been delayed because the flight from London was an hour late, so there was no rush to get to the gate. Instead I wandered around the new terminal, which had been seriously done up (rebuilt entirely?) since last year. A steak sandwich took the edge off my hunger, and peach ice tea dealt very effectively with my thirst.
The upstairs seating area afforded an excellent view of the runway so I read Bridget Jones and watched the planes come in. At 3pm the Virgin 747-400 taxied in, following the track markers to gate A8. I was impressed by how deftly the crew could manoeuvre it, though not for the first time wondered how anything that big could actually fly.
The gate opened around 4:30pm, and for the first time in my experience Flying Club passengers got called on early. It was nice to be able to find my seat, square away my bag and settle down for the flight before the main rush of passengers arrived. Again, I had an aisle seat and only one other guy sharing the three seats with me so there was space to stretch.
By the time we'd taken off and reached cruising altitude, I had finished Stephenson's "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" and had made a start on "Weaving The Web". Then the films started. I saw "Meet The Parents" (pretty good, funny in parts), "Pay It Forward" (very good, very well done, even if the ending was a bit calculated) and "Memento" (strange, lots of brainpower needed to track what the hell was going on, which was tricky at that time of the morning).
My oft-expressed aversion to flying in the same plane as small children got further reinforced. I did manage to hold off garrotting one anklebiter in particular, but only because he seldom wandered within reach.
Finishing "Weaving The Web", I cursed my reading speed. Having said that, I could have spent a lot more time in the last third of the book but that would have involved concentration and I was sparing all my limited resources in that department for the drive home. I'd done some thinking about travel to Datchet and had decided to investigate buses to Windsor and taxis from there to Cobb Close. I hoped my car was intact and unstolen, but of course there was no way to find out.
We made landfall in London around 11am, about half an hour late, which wasn't bad going. London was grey, cold and slightly damp, so no real change. The traditional long wait at the baggage carousel was a bit tedious, but eventually my bags appeared and I pushed them through Customs.
The bus station adjacent to Terminal 3 didn't run any Windsor or Slough buses; instead I had to take the long, long tunnel to the central bus station. My arms felt a good three inches longer by the time I got there. By handy timing I arrived just in time to catch the bus to Slough, and was able to collapse in a front seat and let blood flow back into my arms.
The bus sped towards Slough, but turned off to Langley and made its way to Slough station via the backroads. I tried to disguise my impatience as it ambled through Slough traffic. Slough really is a hole, it pains me to say. "Let friendly bombs rain on Slough" -- absolutely. But the taxi from Slough railway station to Datchet was correspondingly fast, somewhat disturbingly so in fact. Anyway, I ended up at my brother's place about 40 minutes after leaving Heathrow and for a cost of £7.40 rather than £40 so I was quite happy.
It was an inexhaustible source of relief that my car was parked up on the side of the road, unscratched, undented, un-broken-into and with all four tyres intact. I heaved the bags into the boot, climbed in and fired up. The engine purred happily; clearly my little bro' had given it regular runs. Quite long ones too, if the near-empty fuel tank was anything to go by.
The run to home took just about an hour, enough to play the Indigo Girls "Rites of Passage" CD. I stopped in a garage near Andover to refuel, check the tyres and give the car a good wash since it seemed to have been used to clean Datchet's roads of mud. Then home sweet home, and a lovely long bath while I contemplated the huge pile of post awaiting me. Mostly bills, but hey.
A good holiday; tiring travel to get there and back, but I'd relaxed well enough to forget entirely about work. Of course, it now remained to be seen what this would mean when I got back into the office tomorrow...
This article is released under the OpenContent license.