The Flight

Got a laptop and now paying $12 per day for the privilege of using it in my room! Hey ho, I'll try to claim it on expenses. So to catch up on the last few days...

Let's start with the flight. Taxi to BRS, in good time to check-in. Coffee and bacon roll for breakfast - fascinating stuff so far - still not really believing what is happening to me and wandering around in a bit of a daze but nothing too far out of my comfort zone after all, it's not my first time in an airport.

The transatlantic flight was actually surprisingly uninteresting just very long, watched GI Joe, played Bedazzled a lot on the little screen on the chair in front, listened to a bit of music and 7.5 hours just flew by! Landed in Newarke (which I have since heard described as the armpit of the world - very reassuring considering I have to spend over 8 hours there on the way home!) and stressed myself out too much about not being allowed into the US - "what, no visa?" you know the sort of thing. But, as I knew really, it was fine. I headed off to the the connecting flight to Minneapolis which was significantly shorter, 2.5 hours, but had rather more to make it stand out. The plane felt tiny, a little Embrea 145 which seemed only slightly larger than a coach! Well, if you ignore the wings of course. The steward was archetypicaly camp and I have been wracking my brains for 2 days now to try and remember who he reminded me of and the closest I can get is the waiter in Spinal Tap who says "civilisation!" when coming into the dressing room but he was camper than that. It'll come to me who I am thinking of. He insisted on walking down the aisle offering pretzels to all and sundry like they were some local delicacy, and really bad coffee. Sorry to say this Continental Airlines, your coffee is bad, very bad. Every 2-3 minutes whilst we were waiting to taxi he would also remind us to stow our "carry-ons" properly as this was an FAA regulation, well, you try and stown anything bigger than a packet of cigarettes on that plane; the overhead lockers were barely big enough for a carrier bag and the underseat stowage, which they had increased by turning the seat cushion into a floating life-preserver (damn cunning these aeroplane designers) was still too small for my bag. Now, in case you think I was trying to sneak my suitcase on, this was a laptop bag, not big, not big at all. I managed to jam it under the seat in front of me and as long as I kept stuffing the handle back every so often I wasn't told off. Not too sure what the punishment is for not stowing a bag properly; I assume either you or the bag are ejected.

Spetacular view flying over US which was covered in cloud and as we were heading west we were chasing the sun. The sunset when it finally came was truly spectacular; the darkest blue sky, the sun highlighting the top of the clouds in hot orange - one of those days you wish you were Van Gogh, just to do it justice.

Throughout the entire flight however there was a slight problem; Mrs Woman Who Never Stopped Talking. 3 hours from boarding to landing. I swear she had mastered the art of circular breathing. It wasn't that she was saying anything wrong or terribly irritating it was simply the tone of her voice cut straight through the sounds of the flight, by-passed my ears and sliced directly into my brain. There was one moment of irony in her conversation when she was saying how people were not doing enough to stop global warming; whilst on a jet plane. Nice I thought. I blame the woman sitting next to her; why did she keep replying? Just when I thought it would all stop, just as it seemed she was winding down, her nieghbour would respond and off she would go again. The landing was pretty hairy compared to most but I suppose with the smaller aircraft you are allowed to make fairly dramatic turns on the approach, I just thought you should make adjustments before you reach the treshold of the runway, maybe it was windy! Still, as dad used to say, "any landing you walk away from is a good one", and there I was in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis, home of the Coen brothers. Of course, it was dark when I landed and on the taxi in to town I couldn't really tell where I was - plus I was knackered after nearly 14 hours of travel and couldn't really focus. Next episode - The Hotel