Seattle to Gatwick via Charlotte

The alarm went off way too early this morning (3:45am). I asked myself: am I ready for the long day of travel ahead? I have to be, I guess.  In addition to spending the last couple of weeks wrapping things up with work and taking care of things at home – like canceling subscriptions, notifying the banks & credit card companies, cleaning up my “piles” on the apartment floor and of course, packing – I’ve been recovering from my blasted tonsillectomy.  It’s not so much the pain that bothers me, but the constant feeling that there’s a lump in my throat, the fatigue, side effects of the drugs and ever-present worry that something will go awry – a stray tortilla chip perhaps – that will send me back to the emergency room.  Anyway, I’ve already delayed my trip once, which cost me another $800 in the form of an additional one-way plane ticket to London.  It was probably for the better as I was definitely not feeling up to snuff to travel last Saturday (8/14), so today’s the day. 

Ugh.  I didn’t remember my luggage being so heavy when I packed and moved them to the living room yesterday.  Thank goodness Razz was willing to grab the gigantic suitcase with the year’s worth of stuff I deemed necessary to bring along.  It has been two weeks since my operation and I still can’t lift anything more than 15 lbs or walk up a flight of stairs without breathing heavily.  Sure makes you appreciate youth and good health a lot more!  We said our goodbyes at the airport after a little bit of shuffling of items from one suitcase to another to make weight restrictions and off to Charlotte I flew.

My first flight was pretty uneventful and the hour at which I got up this morning made it pretty easy to sleep during this leg of the trip.  The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the Charlotte airport (CLT) was the smell of fried chicken – yum!  It had been quite some time since I had eaten meat (mostly apple sauce, jello, boiled rice and yes, Ensure), so as soon as I had located my connecting gate, I went back and helped myself to one of my guilty pleasures with a side of dirty rice.  Although I am mostly healed, it was still slow going in terms of actually getting the food down.  My jaw is pretty tight and my tongue is still slightly swollen, despite the steroid shot I agreed to receive to help with this very issue – and of course, the muscle memory for eating & talking are still being relearned given the new spaces within my mouth.  Sigh.

CLT reminded me of a couple of mid-Western airports I had been to in the past – the ceilings were pretty low & lighting pretty dingy – it made Sea-Tac look positively posh in comparison. Really, the only thing of note was the long row of rocking chairs along one of the walkalators/travelators/moving sidewalks.  Taydom – what gives??

When it was time to start boarding, a message was broadcast over the PA system mentioning something about passengers having to check-in.  Odd, I thought – didn’t I already do that back at Sea-Tac?  Wasn’t this just going to be another connecting flight?  No, it turns out.  I got up to the service counter by the gate and it was like a mini version of immigration:

What is your final destination today, sir?  Do you have a return ticket?  No?  How long are you planning on staying in the UK?  One year?  Are you a student?  Do you have some documentation to this effect?  Oh, you have a visa.  Good, otherwise, you would have had to stay here with me…

What the heck was that about, anyway?  I’ve traveled extensively through Asia and have never had to do that before.  Nor did I have to do this when I last went to Europe last year (Vienna & Prague).  Eventually, I got on the plane – right next to an English challenged Indian mother and her two children; one of whom was sitting in my seat.  It didn’t take much to get the kid the move, but about 15 minutes later, his mother leans over and says – I think there are some open seats, in case my daughter wants to sleep – indicating that I should move.  Seriously, who is this woman?  I didn’t put up too much of a fuss since what she said was true.  There was an entire row of empty seats behind me, so I moved over.  Only after I settled in did I realize I was sitting in that row of seats in the center of the plane where the number of seats decreased by one – so it meant that my tray table came out the side of my seat and my video monitor was to either side of me instead of right in front of me.  Grief – I couldn’t even lift the armrests and stretch out into the seat next to me.  I looked around for a few minutes and was chagrined to find that there were no other aisle seats around me.  Oh well.

The second leg of the trip was a bit more difficult.  I couldn’t sleep and my throat began to bother me a little bit.  Also, one thing I figured out I was unable to do was to equalize the pressure in my ears (aka, popping them) when the cabin pressure changed.  The result was a rather restless and uncomfortable flight.  As we descended into Gatwick, I was awestruck by the Southern English countryside.  It looked like something out of postcard or history book, with the farms and specks of buildings and meandering roads and waterways.  The group of American kids sitting behind me were getting quite rowdy at the sight as well.  We finally arrived at the Gatwick airport, where I was greeted by a massive line at immigration for those holding passports from “all other parts of the world,” meaning non-EU or UK.  When I finally made it to the counter, I had to provide my fingerprints (electronically scanned) to confirm my identity and ensure a match with the prints I provided with my visa application.  I was asked a series of questions about where I was staying and the name of the school as well as my job placement.  It seemed redundant to me that they were asking me all these questions since it was all submitted as part of my visa application.  You would think they could cut down on the amount of time spent in immigration by just letting me scan my prints and letting me get through since I’ve already been vetted through the visa process.  What kind of world do we live in, where there have to be so many control mechanisms in place at borders to prevent terrorism, illegal immigration, etc.?

The next thing was to find out where and how to get onto the Gatwick Express to Victoria station in London – which was another 30 minutes away.  No big deal except that I’m dragging around almost 100 lbs of luggage!  I finally got on the train and settled into my seat, where I thoroughly enjoyed my first on the ground glimpses of merry old England.  Once I arrived at Victoria station, I had to catch a cab to where all the other Mountbatten interns were staying.  My driver looked at the address for a few minutes and figured out where we were headed.  It took some time to get there, but I took the opportunity to get a good first look at London.  After a series of turns down narrow and quiet roads, we arrived at a series of buildings that looked like they could have been university flats.  The road signs said Pear Tree Court.  I tried to explain to him that I think Pear Tree Court was the name of the building, not the street address – which should have been 15 Bastwick Court.  His reply was curt: “boss, I know what the paper says, but I do this for a living, you see.”  Well – you should try arguing with a 60-something London cab driver some time!  Anyway, we finally stopped to ask some local people loading supplies outside of a pub for clarification and they pointed us back the way we had come.  The driver suggested I could get myself back down the street, so he dropped me off right there – somewhat in the middle of nowhere.  I dragged my junk up and down the street for the next 20 minutes and even up some stairs.  I was nearing my wit’s end trying to find 15 Bastwick court since I didn’t have a functioning phone with GPS when lo and behold, the same lady whom we had talked to earlier came driving down the street and recognized that I was quite exhausted and exasperated by this point in time.  At the same time, a postal worker happened to be walking by and together, they figured out I was about half a mile away from where I was supposed to be – Bastwick STREET.  The lady in the mini-van looked at me with sympathetic eyes and said: “oh hun, get in and I’ll take you where you need to go.”  I was surprised by her kindness and her offer and quickly loaded my luggage into a van full of sandwiches that looked like they were on their way to a party.  It seems she worked for the pub we had stopped outside of earlier.

Basking in my good luck, we chatted for a little bit about what I was doing in London.  I thanked her profusely and she replied that she hopes that somebody would do the same for her son if he were in my situation.  We eventually found the building I was staying at and as I pulled my stuff out of the car, she asked me to promise her that I not make a habit of getting into a car with strangers.  Then she drove off.  I don’t know if it was the stress, the fatigue or something else that made me trust her so easily, but I couldn’t help but feel that fortune was smiling on me at that moment in time.

I made my way to the check-in counter and picked up my keys and welcome pack.  I got down to my building and thought: “you’ve got to be kidding me – no elevators??” So there I was, almost an entire day of traveling, little sleep, recovering from surgery, with three heavy bags to carry and three flights of stairs to climb.

Once I got everything into my room, I dropped everything on the floor and collapsed into my bed to catch my breath and embraced the feeling of being the "new kid" in school, where everybody else has already had a chance to meet and place themselves into the pecking order of the playground but you haven't (since I arrived in London almost a week behind the majority of the others).  It filled me with an apprehension that I have not felt in quite a while, but hey, I'm in London!