I’m back in Seattle after a long day’s travel. Door-to-door (i.e. Edinburgh hotel to my apartment) it took 22 hours 30 minutes. Segment by segment:
- The taxi to Edinburgh airport was wonderful. The driver was a great character: something of a social philosopher, with a wicked sense of humour.
- EDI-LHR on a British Midland A320, BD53: a classic business-person’s shuttle flight. Most people were clearly going to London for the day: suits were immaculate, briefcases full of the right papers. The striking thing was the depth of the cloud bank over the northern UK: we climbed out of EDI, entered cloud at about 400 ft. AGL, and didn’t break out into sunshine until 30 minutes later at about FL320. Of course due to the new British rules (“only one piece of carry-on baggage, INCLUDING laptops, handbags, purses, etc.”) I had to check my case. Inevitably it was one of the last ones off the carousel at LHR. I retrieved it, and headed over to Terminal 3.
- United occupies the remotest spot in Heathrow’s Terminal 3, and it’s always a hassle to get there. When I did, the self-checkin machine refused to check me in and told me to see a human. (I could have predicted this, since I’d been blocked at the same point during online checkin.) There was one person handling “Special needs”, and 30 people ahead of me in line. All of a sudden, my 2 hour connection time started to look awfully inadequate. Eventually I got checked in and headed upstairs. It was now 11. I was herded into a line, six people wide, running the length of the terminal building, just to get into the security area. 30 minutes later I reached the head of this line, showed my boarding card, and entered the serpentine queue for the X-ray/metal detector/pat-down screening. When I did reach the X-rays, I was pulled out for a thorough pat-down by a pimply youth who examined me as thoroughly as it’s possible to do without actually removing clothing. I smiled politely, retrieved my shoes, jacket, laptop and case, and headed for the gate. I arrived at 12:05pm; the plane was due to depart at 12:20pm. That is closer than I ever want to be on an international connection.
- The flight itself (LHR-ORD, UA949, 777, seat 22J in Economy Plus) was completely uneventful. We took a northerly route, just skimming the southern tip of Greenland, and things went very smoothly. There were a few noisy kids around, but I plugged in my noise-cancelling headphones and listened to channel 9. (During the oceanic segment, I dug out my iPod and chose two albums: the new Love mash-up of Beatles’ classics, and No Roots by Faithless. Both highly recommended.)
- ORD was efficient, in a kind of robotic way. After clearing Immigration and Customs and schlepping over to Terminal 1 [What idiot decided to have both terminals and concourses? I was departing from gate B5, which meant the B Concourse, which corresponded to Terminal 1. Stupid.], I got through security (third time of the day) hit the RCC and grabbed a gin-and-tonic before logging in to check email. Bad plan: I should have eaten.
- The final flight was UA949, ORD-SEA, B757, seat 12F in Economy Plus. I keep forgetting that row 12 is bad, because it doesn’t have a window. Never mind, it was dark, and I was tired. 12E was empty, so I spread out, kicked back, plugged into channel 9, and went to sleep. This meant that I missed the stupid “snack box” food for sale thing. I went back to sleep, as best I could, but it was a miserably bumpy flight: 170 kt. headwinds, continuous light chop to moderate turbulence, all aircraft hunting vainly for clean air. With that kind of weather we inevitably missed our 8:05pm arrival time, but it was OK: I’d carried on my bags, and so I was able to catch the 8:54pm bus (Route 174) and get home by 9:30pm.
No predictions for how I’m going to get through tomorrow. And speaking of tomorrow, Seattle is due for the same kind of weather as Edinburgh: blustery rain, with sustained gale force winds. Meanwhile the East Coast is basking in unseasonably warm weather……
But overall it was a really delightful trip. It was great to be with my mother for her 91st birthday, good to see my brother and get into Oxford, and a wonderful bonus to spend time with Alec. The Amazon Development Centre team in Scotland blew me away; I hope I don’t offend anyone in Seattle when I say that ADC includes some of the most imaginative engineers that I’ve met at Amazon. They’re a really cool team, and I learned a lot from them. (And special thanks to Joan L. for handling the logistics – it all went flawlessly!)