London/Dublin Day 0/1: This Day Has 43 Hours (Part 2)

In my last entry, we were preparing to land at London Gatwick Airport (LGW) after an 8 hour, 40 minute flight from Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW). One thing I neglected to mention was the in-flight entertainment system, which offered a selection of about 10 video channels with movies ranging from bad to worse, and 15 audio channels that were mediocre at best compared to my XM, but did give us one cool option, the SkyMap.

Tuning to this channel gave you a live display that switched between four features: map of the airplane’s current location with actual and projected flight path; current time at origin, current location and destination; total miles on projected flight path and current miles flown; and current ground speed, altitude and temperature outside the aircraft. While over land, the location feature would switch between approximately 3 levels of zoom, and occasionally pick out a key city from which the distance would be displayed. Thing is, they picked some odd cities. The SkyMap random city highlight of this flight was passing within an indicated 25 miles of Columbus, Indiana, hometown of one of our esteemed BTN commenters. :)

Looking at the SkyMap got pretty aggravating near the end, as I noticed the 180° turn and loopback we had to do before landing at LGW. So despite my fatigue, I was happy to be moving under my own power again as the business-class cabin emptied and us peons were finally allowed forward to disembark. After the long hike through featureless, sealed-off tunnels that is typical of most international arrivals, I hit British immigration and actually didn’t have to deal with much of a line. Upon reaching the front of the line, I got lucky for a second time: the immigration agent didn’t feel it necessary to give me an extended interrogation of the kind I got last spring in Manchester and last summer in Montreal, as a young, unaccompanied male traveller. Perhaps my passport had finally gathered enough stamps that he figured the only danger in letting me travel was to my own bank account — which is true enough.

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London/Dublin Day 0/1: This Day Has 43 Hours (Part 1)

With this entry I’ll begin my London/Dublin series, wherein I hit some of the highlights and lowlights of my most recent European adventure in more-or-less chronological order. I’ll occasionally branch off into mostly-unrelated tangents that crossed my mind on the trip, such as cars, book reviews, and Canadian identity crises. But admit it, you come here for that kind of weird stuff anyway, so I suggest you just sit back and enjoy it. Unless you come for the football, in which case this almost completely football-less saga is not for you. ;-)

After a long Christmas night of packing and collecting a folder of important documents that would be forgotten in the morning rush (like, say, my family’s itineraries and my collection of maps for the rental-car drive), I woke up Friday, 26 December at about 0730 EST for a long day of travel. I have trouble sleeping on planes anyway, and for trans-Atlantic jaunts, between the anticipation, the heavily-processed air and the necessarily out-of-sync mealtimes, the dream of sleeping my way across the Atlantic remains just that. So 24 + (24 - 5 hours for GMT adjustment) is 43 hours without sleep. Fun times.

My sister had to make one stop in McLean and get to Dulles (IAD) by 1300 to help with pre-departure administrivia. So for my 1528 departure from Reagan National (DCA), she picked me up at 0900, as I scrambled to take out the trash, secure the apartment, adjust the thermostat down, and otherwise prepare to leave for 10 days. Forgot to stop mail delivery? I’d just have to bring a trash bag to catch the overflow when I unlocked the box ten days later.

We got out of Richmond by 0915 and made great time up I-95, reaching my drop-off at Franconia-Springfield Metro at 1045. So, with just under five hours to kill before I caught the domestic leg of my trip, I made an executive decision: I’d stop at DCA to check my rollable bag, then head for the Washington Auto Show. American Airlines check-in was painless, and with my largest bag left in their capable hands, I caught the next Yellow Line train inbound.

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Blogules/Political Footballs, 7 January 2004

Happy New Year, everybody! As of Sunday afternoon at about 3:45, I have been back in the States and recovering from my jet lag. I’m going to take a page out of Lileks’s book and a series of notes from my trip in “tape-delayed” format — in order, but time-shifted (which, not coincidentally, allowed me to actually enjoy Europe rather than spending a lot of time editing my fragmented notes into a readable format). That may start later this week, but for right now, I have some short-shots to clear out before we take to the air, so first the football, then the politics.

• Even before the announcement that Big East commissioner and BTN favorite Mike Tranghese would be forming a commission to study restructuring the BCS in light of the USC controversy, one thing was clear: the people who constructed the BCS didn’t really want a system to decide who was #1 or #2, they just wanted a system to confirm the established “wisdom” of the powers-that-be. When the system told them something they didn’t like this year, you saw the reaction. Either accept the results all the time or get rid of the system entirely: don’t put in fifty million tweaks.
• From the VT football world, we have Randy King’s season-ender, which is a good reflection of established Hokie opinion. QB Bryan Randall, meanwhile, has become backup point guard Bryan Randall, with permission from Frank Beamer. That’s another indicator that Coach Beamer would really like to just turn the starting job over to Marcus Vick and be done with it — other would-be two-sport talents at VT (including Randall himself, two years ago) have been discouraged from playing basketball, due to the different physical training requirements, injury possibilities, and the mental focus it would take away from football. If Beamer is willing to let Randall shift to basketball for 2 1/2 months, that shows that (a) he trusts Randall not to take too many risks, but (b) if something traumatic does happen, he won’t be too upset about turning the reins over to Marcus.
• Good riddance Steve Spurrier (or, as the Winchester Star’s front page put it last week, “HAPPY NEW YEAR! / Spurrier resigns”), welcome back Joe Gibbs. I can be a Redskins fan again.

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