Departing & Arriving

Travelling is always an experience.

It was on a cool April day that I set out from North East London on my adventure. The first part of the journey was the slowest and most uncomfortable - being dropped at the tube station I had to negotiate the automatic barriers pulling a suitcase on wheels, carrying a backpack, holding my coat and trying to use the tickets to keep the barriers open long enough.

After that, most things seemed simple.

For those not used to travelling in London, it’s sometimes difficult to comprehend the correlation between distance and time. My destination - Heathrow airport - is less than 30 miles away, but it will take me over 2 hours to get there. Not that there isn’t plenty of public transport in London - there is! But it takes all the time because of the many lines and many stations that are needed to get anywhere. My trip is relatively easy with just one change of tube train, and so I settle down on the Central line to start my journey. The connection at Holborn is OK, but involves pulling my suitcase up and down stairs to get to the Piccadilly line; the Victorian builders of this network did not seem to believe in ramps or slopes - nothing as easy as that for them!! So today I have to haul cases up and down the stairs, much to my, and other passengers, frustration.

And then to Heathrow, and the long walk that you always have there. Check in and passport control go easily, and then I get to go to the BA lounge - one perk of having been a business traveller for a number of years is a Gold Card that lets me in there - although my current work-free state will mean that this doesn’t last long.

I sit by an indoor fountain and have a drink - and think about the time ahead - 3 months - well, 89 days - of being in the USA - of some travel, and some staying still, of adventure and excitement, of contemplation and thought. I’m not sure who the person leaving really is, and I suspect that the person coming back will be very different.

But I have little time for introspection, as the normal “hurry up to wait” business of travel means I need to go and rush to the gate, so that I can wait there again. And then I am on the plane - I chose an outside of 3 seat on the right of the aircraft. I really prefer to have a window seat, and that really works well if you get at least one spare seat next to you. But I’ve been on some awful transatlantic flights where I’ve been cramped in next to 2 people who seem to use up all the air, so I think that an outside seat gives me a better option. As it turns out, the middle seat next to me is unoccupied, which gives me and the person in the far seat some room to stretch out.

I do the thing we are told to do, of putting my watch to the time of the place we are to arrive at, which means it’s now early morning again, and my feeling of hunger should be for breakfast, rather than lunch. But it will be a while till any food is provided, and so I sit and look at what films there are going to be shown.

There is very little delay in our take off, and soon we are in the air, and the service begins - first I say yes to a drink (diet coke). I have ordered a “low calorie” meal - what this normally means is I get the same as everyone else, but less fatty stuff and more salad - it also means I get the food first before the other people, and I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but it sure makes me feel the odd one out. In any case I get lunch/breakfast (depending on which time zone I choose to be in), say yes to another drink (a glass of wine) no to coffee, no to another glass of wine, no to duty free - and then, following that excitement, we are left to contemplate the 6 remaining hours of the journey... what to do?

It is always a struggle for me to know how to occupy myself on these long flights. There are options; to watch one of the many movies they show, listen to music, sleep, read, stare vacantly out the window or into the middle distance (that is one of my favourites). There is also the pastime I hear others using of shouting at children or continually whining - I’ve never tried these myself, but given enough flights I might.

The sleeping option is what I logically think I should do, so I put on my eye shades to keep out the light, headphones to keep out the noise, and pull a blanket over myself to keep warm. And I fall into a deep and pleasant sleep for what feels like hours, only when I wake and check my watch, it’s actually only five minutes later.

So, with the sleeping thing not working, I decide to watch a movie - they have quite a selection of new and old movies, which seem really good and interesting to watch. The only trouble is I’m on a plane - I get to watch it on a tiny individual screen with bad resolution, and listen through a cheap headset where I alternate between having it so loud that it hurts my ears, or so low I can’t actually make out what is being said. Nevertheless, I do watch a film. At least, I put it on, and adjust the volume to barely understandable, but find myself drifting off in a reverie, and not actually concentrating enough to even remember the title of the film, much less the plot.

Eventually I give this up, and put on the travelling map on the screen, I actually like this a lot - watching our slow, slow progress out over the Atlantic, skirting Greenland, and seeing that our course will take us over Canada before getting to the eastern seaboard of the USA. It’s constant flicking between the maps, the outside temperature and our height, the time in the UK and the US, our remaining flying time and expected time of arrival, and then back to the maps again is relentless and hypnotic, but even that pails after a while, and there are still hours to go

So I get out a book to read, but that hurts my eyes and my brain, and I eventually give that up too, and go back to trying to sleep and - the one that always works! - staring aimlessly into the middle distance. The time goes by slowly, but it goes by.

And suddenly there is bustle and activity again, as we get closer to landing, and they serve food once more!! This time a “snack” which I could count as a kind of lunch/dinner - on these transit days it’s difficult to work out which meal you are eating. We get to fill out immigration forms, and just generally hurry to wait again until that blessed moment when we touch down.

And then once again, the miracle of travel has happened, and I’m about to step out into a new adventure, in a new city, in a new country.