The Big Surprise
1755 hours EST
Well, we are off. We are somewhere between Cincinnati and our connecting flight in Newark. Our final destination: London and from there, the Isle of Wight. If you are reading this it means that we have arrived, surprised Wendy and then took over her wireless access point to get online. For the uniformed, we have been secretly planning a surprise trip back to England for Zoë’s Mum’s sixtieth birthday. Everyone has been in on the trip, except for the birthday girl.
I plan on making this one long post to go over our trip…greeting Wendy will be at the end. If you want to skip right ahead to the end, go ahead. If you would rather listen to me pass on my observations, then stay tuned.
Mom & Dad shuttled us down to Cincy where he hung out until our flight. Getting through security was painless. After picking my most metal laden pants to travel in, I figured I would get the extra screening. No such luck…
The flight was delayed about fifteen minutes, but we were off…
2230 hrs EST
Well I had to stop typing before because I had to shut offmy Zoë’s laptop to land. Skip ahead five odd hours and we are on leg two. We took off late from Newark because there was some unknown leak in the lavatory. So, after sitting on the plane and at the gate, for 30 minutes, we finally pushed back. Unfortunately, we had to wait another 45 minutes just to taxi. We are now airborne, in the exit row, with plenty of leg room. Roll on the beverage cart!
OK, fifteen minutes later, I remembered the downside to the exit row…no reclining seats. Ughh…
0330 hrs EST/0830 UK
I slept for a few hours and it looks like we are only a few hours out. In order to prepare my self for the cultural conversion I am about to go through, I am watching Little Britain on the PSP. If I happen to run into men dressed as Victorian ladies or a slightly overweight fast talking girl in a pink jumpsuit, I should have no problems. The in-flight movie you ask? Disney's The Kid. Didn't that come out four years ago!
We touched down in London about an hour late. After making the trip from our arrival gate to immigration, we moved fairly quickly through the long meandering line. For amusement, we watched a guy in front of us who was either drunk, old or both...depending how you looked at it. Outside of almost taking out two of the rope dividers, he ended up kicking his briefcase on the floor instead of carrying it. By the time we made to the immigration officer, drunk old guy next to us announced to his officer that he was "never coming back here again"! His immigration officer accommodated him by responding, "Great, glad to hear that." Our officer was so busy listening to the drunk old guy that wasn't paying attention to us. I thought about dropping some Farsi to bring things back on point, but decided against it.
We found our chatty taxi driver and made our hour and a half drive down to Portsmouth where we got the catamaran. The only bad thing about our trip is that the Isle of Wight Festival is taking place at the exact same time. The boat was filled with a bunch of kids clutching backpacks, sleeping mats and coolers. Obvious festival goers.
We shot across the Solent and made our way up to the car rental place. After filling out the necessary paperwork, we jumped into our VW Polo and headed off to Bob & Wendy's. Now I plan on driving on this trip, but gave first dibs to Zoe. I started to rethink that as she asked me to remind her which side of the road she was supposed to drive on.
1000 hrs EST/1400 UK
We arrived at Chez Johnson rang the bell and....
Well, we are off. We are somewhere between Cincinnati and our connecting flight in Newark. Our final destination: London and from there, the Isle of Wight. If you are reading this it means that we have arrived, surprised Wendy and then took over her wireless access point to get online. For the uniformed, we have been secretly planning a surprise trip back to England for Zoë’s Mum’s sixtieth birthday. Everyone has been in on the trip, except for the birthday girl.
I plan on making this one long post to go over our trip…greeting Wendy will be at the end. If you want to skip right ahead to the end, go ahead. If you would rather listen to me pass on my observations, then stay tuned.
Mom & Dad shuttled us down to Cincy where he hung out until our flight. Getting through security was painless. After picking my most metal laden pants to travel in, I figured I would get the extra screening. No such luck…
The flight was delayed about fifteen minutes, but we were off…
2230 hrs EST
Well I had to stop typing before because I had to shut off
OK, fifteen minutes later, I remembered the downside to the exit row…no reclining seats. Ughh…
0330 hrs EST/0830 UK
I slept for a few hours and it looks like we are only a few hours out. In order to prepare my self for the cultural conversion I am about to go through, I am watching Little Britain on the PSP. If I happen to run into men dressed as Victorian ladies or a slightly overweight fast talking girl in a pink jumpsuit, I should have no problems. The in-flight movie you ask? Disney's The Kid. Didn't that come out four years ago!
We touched down in London about an hour late. After making the trip from our arrival gate to immigration, we moved fairly quickly through the long meandering line. For amusement, we watched a guy in front of us who was either drunk, old or both...depending how you looked at it. Outside of almost taking out two of the rope dividers, he ended up kicking his briefcase on the floor instead of carrying it. By the time we made to the immigration officer, drunk old guy next to us announced to his officer that he was "never coming back here again"! His immigration officer accommodated him by responding, "Great, glad to hear that." Our officer was so busy listening to the drunk old guy that wasn't paying attention to us. I thought about dropping some Farsi to bring things back on point, but decided against it.
We found our chatty taxi driver and made our hour and a half drive down to Portsmouth where we got the catamaran. The only bad thing about our trip is that the Isle of Wight Festival is taking place at the exact same time. The boat was filled with a bunch of kids clutching backpacks, sleeping mats and coolers. Obvious festival goers.
We shot across the Solent and made our way up to the car rental place. After filling out the necessary paperwork, we jumped into our VW Polo and headed off to Bob & Wendy's. Now I plan on driving on this trip, but gave first dibs to Zoe. I started to rethink that as she asked me to remind her which side of the road she was supposed to drive on.
1000 hrs EST/1400 UK
We arrived at Chez Johnson rang the bell and....
Mike Lang