I've just had a shave, a shower, cleaned my teeth and changed into new clothes. In Houston. That's a weird sentence to type. In Houston.
It's the morning after my journey, about 9am, and I am physically tired. I can almost taste the atrophied muscles, but one must fight on to bring you glad tidings of aforementioned journey. It would appear that people back have sent me well-wishes (is that a phrase?) since my inbox is far too heavily stuffed to be the normal bacn and spam.
It's probably going to be a long post, but I might give each leg of the journey its own post, just to space things out and not bore anyone. Huzzah.
We (mother, father and I) left Plymouth at around 11am on Wednesday. The drive up to Heathrow was pretty uneventful. We stopped at a few rest stations to catch our breath. I kept my head down playing Pokemon and listening to music. Wonderfully, my Zen decided that it would freeze on me, and when that happens I have to wait for the fucker to run out of battery. But because I'm not an idiot I made sure it was fully charged. So, no MP3 to use. Fucking great. Luckily my phone has some music on, but not as wide or current as I would like. It provided a relief.
I couldn't tell you what time we actually pulled into the car park of the Travelodge, but I'd hazard a guess and say it was about 4:30. Dad, being dad, wanted to drive a dry run to Terminal 4 so he knew the timings and such. Dad, being dad went the wrong way and nearly drove into a runway. I am not kidding.
The Travelodge was your bog-standard affair, so there's nothing to talk about there. We went for a drink in the bar, and then for a walk around the immediate area. Dad's glasses nearly lost a screw and thankfully a shop owner fixed that problem. After that we stayed in a pub for the rest of the evening drinking, watching the planes come in, and getting fed. It was a nice – and typically Williams – way of saying what needed to be said. You know, 'Bye' and shit.
We turned in around 10:30. Dad fell asleep almost immediately which meant no one else could. I had about 5 minutes of sleep that night. I wasn't happy with that.
'Getting up' at 4:45 and spending roughly 45 minutes packing bags and making sure the room was clear, was an interesting experience considering I was a shuffling idiot, desperate for sleep. Nevertheless, we parked and got into Terminal 4 by about 5:45-6. It was a very short wait at check-in and nary a problem to be had. There were plenty of children, however. Great.
With my boarding card in hand and my bag on its way to the plane, there was not much to do but wait. A cup of tea and a chat later I was on my way to security. There was the inevitable tears on their part, but I can honestly say that I had no real feeling that I would cry. I knew I would miss them – I DO miss them – but the overriding wish was just to get on the plane and get it started.
Security was a piece of piss, not at all like the hassle I was anticipating. I got into to the departure lounge at around 7, maybe earlier. Though I did beat the morass of travellers wanting to check-in and then bundle through security, 2 hours to wait is not a pleasant experience. There's only so many duty-free items you can look. Boarding rolled round soon enough and I was on the plane at like 8:45. The bitch of it was that my phone would have to be switched off, so bye the fuck bye to music.
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