Seattle to London

Note: I was halfway through writing this entry when a cleaner from the hotel walked in to see me hunched over my computer in the corner wearing a tshirt and undershorts. She seemed embarrassed and said she will be back in a few hours.

For reading ease, I have broken up my trip into three entries.

In my first entry, I made the travel itinerary sound extremely simple. It was a lie. “The best schemes of mice and men,” claimed Robert Burns, “gang aft agley.” Or something like that. And my plans weren’t even very best laid. They made a lot of lofty assumptions about the reliability of airline times, how long it would take to do things, and my own abilities to think logically and quickly.

The first leg went very well. Left for the airport on time, got there on time, had a very pleasant flight out to Newark, and found the gate for my connection very quickly. So far, so good.

But when I realized that there was no plane at that gate as the time to board came and went, and the time to leave came and went, I started to read over my plans again. I realized that I had given myself really less than two hours to do the following:

1. Go through customs

2. Get my bags. Since this flight to London was a round-trip, the second half of which I will take next June, I made completely separate bookings with easyJet to get to Amsterdam.

3. Store one of my bags at left luggage. I didn’t want to haul two huge bags for a one-week trip to Maastricht, so I stored one at the airport

4. Check my other bag with easyJet

5. And get out of there

The flight out of Newark was not fun. It left about an hour and a half late and sat on the tarmac for about another forty-five minutes waiting in line to take off. As we were waiting, a girl asked me me to switch seats with her so she could sit next to her friend. No problem, I thought. A couple minutes after I settle into my new seat, the lady next to me starts being sick. Before we were even on the runway.

If you know me, I have probably talked with you about my opinions on vomiting. To make a long rant short, I don’t believe in it, I think it’s unnecessary, and it completely freaks me out. I think it’s one of the least pleasant things in the entire universe.

We are talking, here, about a seven hour flight and the lady next to me started puking about negative fifteen minutes into it. She was mumbling about something she ate not agreeing with her, and asking me to pass her extra bags, and…well, I’m not going to write about it anymore. It’s just to upsetting. She was ultimately alright, and I survived, too.