Home

We made it home last night. Mary and Helen flew with Mary's parents out of Birmingham to Nashville via Newark on Continental. They departed BHX at 1:30 and arrived in Nashville at 10:15, an hour late. Mary said that Helen was happy and excited the entire time. Mary's dad did have to face some questions (for the second time) because his name, William Robinson, is on a no-fly list. I can't help but laugh.

My morning started at 4:30 am. I showered and clothed myself, took a swig of coffee, grabbed my satchel and began the one-hour walk to my bus stop (the local bus wasn't available yet). The Megabus arrived at 6:10 a.m. and I was off to London. I had our recently repaired MP3 player with me and enjoyed many favorites en route. We arrived in London just before 9:00. I stopped at a McDonald's and ate the second Egg McMuffin of my life... nasty. I had some time, so I walked a mile or so and saw Buckingham Palace. I boarded the Tube and made it to London Heathrow by 11:30. My flight didn't leave until 3:40 so I had time to kill.

There was a serpentine line of at least 200 people at the British Airways area. Thankfully, because I had no baggage to check I got to enter the small line, the one with only one person ahead of me. This was only the beginning of my flight luck yesterday. The BA representative told me the flight was booked solid, but she was still able to get an aisle seat for me and my long legs. My gate was at the opposite end of the airport, but that was fine because I was in no hurry and it happened to be right beside the "quiet sitting" area. In this area, no announcements are made and comfortable lounge chairs were provided. There was room for 60 people or so, and only 15 people took advantage of it. So I relaxed well until my boarding time.

This is the best part. When I started to board, the attendant told me that my seat had been changed. I asked if I still had an aisle seat, and he said I'd been upgraded. When I arrived at seat 28J, I discovered I was in the only single business class seat. Now, on BA flights there are 3 classes -- first, business, and commoner (or something). I'd always been a commoner, but yesterday I was in the biggest, most comfortable seat with an infinite amount of legroom. BA flights are nice (everybody gets there own little TV screen with 18 channels!), but the food in business class was even better than the other stuff. I occassionally peeked my head through the curtain to see how the little people were getting on. Our flight took of on time and landed 15 minutes late due to strong headwinds... not bad. I can't complain... this was the second-leg of the ticket I'd only paid $282 for.

I arrived in DC at approximately 6 pm eastern time, puttered about the airport for 3.5 hours and boarded the little United Express flight to Nashville. This flight was as expected and, most importantly, it arrived safely at 10:20 p.m.. After a quick orientation on how exactly to get to long-term parking, I picked up Mary's parents car (Mary's sister Helen picked them up about 15 minutes before I landed) and headed to Columbia, arriving at approximately 11:30 pm.

I watched a little ESPN, slept for 5 hours or so, and then joined everybody else. Our internal clocks are really messed up now, so we were bright eyed at 5:45 this morning. I drove my piece-of-junk trunk into town and got a haircut this morning. Did I mention that I hadn't had a haircut in three months? I felt like Captain Caveman.

This is a beautiful spring day and I will spend much of it outside. I suspect that my blogging will be negligible until we return to England on April 20th.