Alaska-->Chicago-->London

Tues Sep 18, 2012

Well, looks like I made it! To Europe, at least. I’m sitting a few blocks away from the Heathrow airport in London on a little grassy knoll with some flowers and periodic sunshine, awaiting my ride to Plymouth which I will be catching a whopping 5 hours later than I expected. Meaning, of course, that I will be arriving into Plymouth tonight after the bank & linens shop close—but right when the pubs & bars start getting festive—so I’m not too heartbroken. Fun tonight, arrival chores tomorrow I suppose.  What a rough life I live.

My brilliant idea to wake up in Chicago at 6 AM yesterday morning to hopefully result in exhaustion for my all-night flight to London thus allowing me to sleep & easily deal with the 8 hour time adjustment was not so brilliant after all. Whew. That was a mouthful. But, yes, the flight was eventful & full of everything but the shut-eye I was hoping to receive. Wine, loud dance music, chit chatting, black lights. Not even kidding. I guess my America --> Europe flight wasn’t so different from Mom & Dad’s flight 38 years ago afterall. Besides the fact that I was the only student on board.

Not to mention, the airline I flew, Virgin Atlantic, gave each of us sleep masks, blankets, pillows, socks—yes, socks­—dinner & breakfast, free wine, & a celebratory atmosphere which allowed me to jump right on into the whole culture shock thing right off the bat in the O’Hare airport! Yee yee!

After leaving an hour later than our scheduled 6PM departure time due to that wretched rain storm that has been following me for the past three days (it came down to Chicago from Alaska), we finally got underway, only to fasten our seat-belts once again for our emergency fuel landing in “Uganda” for an hour-or-so delay.

My plane mates and I were confused, to say the least. Responses of the Captain’s bizarre & unseemingly frantic announcement are as follows:

“We’re stopping in Uganda? Isn’t that…Africa?”

“Wait…is Africa on this side of the Atlantic?”
“Uganda isn’t in Africa, guys. It’s in Europe somewhere!”

“I don’t have my African shots. Are they going to throw me out of the plane before we land?”

Their knowledge of Geography worried me a bit. We had been flying for no more than three hours, so—as if logical reasoning wasn’t enough—physical reasoning existed that made it very obvious to me that we weren’t actually stopping in Uganda. We hadn’t even crossed the Atlantic yet.

So, blindly we sat helplessly in our seats as we landed in a dark, unmarked place somewhere on the Northern hemisphere of our planet. We all laughed—not quite uncontrollably, but almost—about the ridiculousness of our whole landing –in-Uganda-on-our-flight-to-London situation. As all 5 of my my plane mates and I piled on top of each other to look out my small window, since I was the only one of us who had the usually fortunate—but in this specific instance incredibly unfortunate—window seat, we saw a building amidst the seemingly infinite black nothingness that read “Gander”. 





So, there we sat for an hour. No, not in Africa (shockingly), but in this small military base in East East Eastern North America. Did I mention it was East? It was East. The East coast of North America. Which lies on the North American Tectonic plate next to the Atlantic Ocean, which is a different ocean than the Pacific which is where Alaska is located next to….(I hope my passenger from the boat this summer who asked me what ocean we were on is reading this.) I’m so sorry, but when was Geography eliminated from the elementary curriculum? Oh, it wasn’t? Hmm…somehow I don’t believe that based on my recent findings.

So, due to our odd and various delays, I now sit here in London awaiting a bus that will arrive at 13:50 since I was flying over Ireland during my 8:50 bus departure.

Wait, I will, on this grassy knoll, for eccentric passerby’s to walk by that I can wave down until they come over and say hello. Tonight I will be in Plymouth! Well, if all goes according to plan…which at this point seems likely but not definite.

I think I will learn what all this new currency amounts to in the meantime.