Thoughts on Traveling to Heathrow Airport After Sleeping Less Than Three Hours on Someone’s Hotel Room Floor and Going to the Tube Station an Hour Before it Opens and Being Forced to Wander Around a Tesco Until it Does

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I know this shifts tense, but it is a fairly accurate journal transcript.

Thoughts on Traveling to Heathrow Airport After Sleeping Less Than Three Hours on Someone’s Hotel Room Floor and Going to the Tube Station an Hour Before it Opens and Being Forced to Wander Around a Tesco Until it Does

7-10-08

Thursday

1. Change all clocks to the proper time zone.
2. Especially your alarm clock.
3. Completely empty Underground cars are creepy.
4. Not as creepy as completely empty Underground stations.
5. Heathrow may be bigger, but it is downright serene when compared to Gatwick.
6. Contiki doesn’t plan for contingencies worth a shit.
7. My flight seems to be the “your kids fly FREE” flight.

So, the hotel situation…. Well, we’ll discuss that at another time. Let’s just say that, “we will take care of booking your accommodation the night before your flight,” means something very different to an American than a New Zealand based company. I’ve learned this the hard way and want to give you the benefit of my experience. But, again, more on this later. The following is a journal from my harrowing trip home after my three weeks of “European Inspiration.”

Virgin Mobile is a capable of telling you when you have passed from Germany to Austria and sends you a message welcoming you. Shit, it could tell when I went from France to Belgium, and I’m pretty sure one of those countries is fictional. What Virgin Mobile is in­-capable of doing is using that same technology to correct the time on your phone when you enter a new time zone. This is not normally a big problem as the amount of natural light you see at 5 am is, typically, a bit less than what you would see at 6 am.

This litmus test, however, gets shot pretty soundly to hell in London during the summer. You see the London summer sees the sun set at around 10-10:30 pm and come back up at around 4 am. So when my alarm, on a clock still set to “The Continent’s” time goes off at 5 to get me to the tube station for the first train at 6 to get to Heathrow at 7 for my 8:45 flight, goes off I am blissfully unaware that the time is actually 4 am until I am told by a workman that I am not allowed in the tube station for another hour.

Another thing about London summers is that they are cold. Not terribly cold, but cold enough that the though of waiting outside in one for an hour seems… unpleasant.

Now, had I been a registered guest at my hotel I could have gone and waited in the lobby. However, as my staying there was “off the books” and saying “Well, I was on Noel’s floor, that’s basically the same,” isn’t really an option I am left to find an alternate plan. (Trust me, there is more on this.)

I decide to take advantage of my only option, the Tesco (think 7/11, but a 7/11 that speaks “The Queen’s”) across the street from the Russell Square station.

Trying to look like a serious customer at a small convenience store, a small empty convenience store, a small empty convenience store at 5am¸ is impossible and you simply end up looking like a potential thief. So, I decide to come clean with the guy behind the counter. I tell him the entire story. Lost reservation, floor sleep, alarm problems, all of it.

He looked at me and said,

“Wow. That’s rough mate. If I had a chair I’d let you sit down. But, yeah, go ahead and hang out.”

Really, I could have kissed they guy. But that would have seemed out of place and could have ended with me on the streets again, so I thought the better of it.

I spend the next hour learning the difference between British and American magazines which can basically be summed up as 1) boobs, and 2) I have no idea who the fake celebrities on the covers are (I am pretty sure who “Becks” is, but not so much so about “Keeley,” although I would like to know more.) It really seems like all you have to do to be famous in the UK is have a full set of teeth and do incredibly stupid things in the vicinity of a camera (so, yeah, pretty much the same as here). The teeth thing appears to be optional.

Finally, the tube station opens.

There is something unsettling about a completely empty trains and tube stations. It has a kind of zombie movie or some other post apocalyptic nightmare vibe. I’ve often described London as looking like an ant pile that has been kicked, and unending flood of people moving in every direction at the same time. It never occurred to me that there are times when the hill is calm and undisturbed, before time kicks the top off.

My tube ride is a straight shot, one train, no transfers. At this time London is asleep, so I sit alone and read the free newspapers that one cannot avoid in this city. Make that the day old free newspapers that have been left for my amusement. Apparently it takes a full years salary to make a down payment on a home in Great Brittan these days, and a poor young man, 10 I think, got a sever chemical burn from a cheap henna tattoo his parents let hem get in Barbados. This, in my view, is shitty parenting. On the plus, we just got a look at the creation of a very strict parent. This guy’s kids won’t be able to cross the fucking street without having the worst case scenario thrown at them by their father, waving a horribly scarred arm about. All you need is to have an artistic choice you made at 10 permanently burned into your skin to create a very non permissive parent.

Think about it, when you were 10 did you have good taste? You think the tattoos some people get when they’re older are bad, I cannot even imagine what this would create. Keep in mind I have seen the following tattoos as a teacher:


1. Marvin the Martian, holding a Mexican flag.
2. The Michael Jordan silhouette, holding a dollar sign instead of a basketball.
3. A flaming star over the state capitol building, with three dice showing a 5, a 1, and a 2 respectively.


That’s right, I’ve seen AREA CODE DICE on someone’s arm, and I think that a 10 year old would make a WORSE choice. But I digress.


For some reason, the train I’m on only goes to terminals 1,2, and 3 and if you are like me and need terminal 4, you have to get off the train and get the next one. This seems odd as they are both on the same tracks and going the same direction. But what do I know? I’m not a train scientist. So after an hour on this train, which I have come to view as a second home as it is the most comfortable I have been in two days, I have to exit and stand on the abandoned platform waiting for the next train. You know, the one that is on the same tracks and traveling in the same direction. Yeah, that one.

Outdoor train platforms always have a slightly adventurous feel to me. Forced to think about it I would say it traces back to my love of Westerns. Any time a train arrived, it always brought some “bidness” with it. Right now I feel like Woody Strode in “Once Upon a Time in the West, waiting to kill the man who is arriving on that afternoon’s train, only not realizing that the train was brining Charles Fucking Bronson and that and that Charlie Bronson is truly impossible to kill and these next few minutes will be my last.

Now, this is the second time I have been alone at an outdoor train station. My first experience was kind of different and held far more promise of adventure. Being at the Hunslow West station next to Hatton cross at the west edge of London at 6:45 am has a slightly less intense feeling than being alone on the Rosa Parks platform, at the edge of Watts, is South Central La, at 2 am.

After about 10 minutes of refreshingly brisk British morning air the proper train arrives that magically takes me down the exact same track as the last train, but somehow ends up with me at a different place. All I can assume is that Heathrow Terminal 4 must be located right next to Hogwarts.

I have been to two major airports in London and have had what we’ll just call “different” experiences at each.

First there is Gatwick. I have had the distinct pleasure of visiting both the domestic AND international terminals and CA-RIST is that something else! While the domestic has the feel of an agitated hornet’s nest, it’s basically a giant room swarming with chaotic conversation, constant frenzied motion, and endless people, it is DECIDEDLY more fun.

You see, most airports have similar, logical systems for locating your plain. You arrive, find your gate, go to your gate, wait there, then board your plane and are whisked away. This system is so widely used, simply put, because it fucking works.

Gatwick, on the other hand, has developed a far more self expressive concept. At Gatwick, all the passengers wait in a GIANT waiting room. A GIANT, HIGH CEILINGED, MADHOUSE of a waiting room. It is quite literally a bee hive without any of the inherent organization.

You sit in this common waiting area and wait for the flight board to tell you where your gate is. Which it does at about 20 minutes before take off. This is where it gets interesting. Most of the domestic flights are seated on a first come first serve basis. It’s like flying Southwest, but without the A,B,C ticket system. This LITERALLY sets off a race for the gate.

Nobody wants to run. They are far too British for that, so instead you get a gauntlet of awkward British speedwalking that ends in a formless mob of men, women, and children all fighting for position in the scrum. Now, I am all for adventure in travel, but for the love of God! There is a place for everything. Nobody wants “Deathrace 2000” at the airport.

The International Terminal is significantly larger, but is far more orderly. Here, they do use the “system that actually works.” It still feels like some overstuffed Calcutta street market, minus the children trying to sell gum. Heathrow has a similar size, but feels more like an upscale department store at Christmas. In other words, Heathrow is for the Soch’s, and Gatwick is where you would meet Soda Pop and Pony Boy.

I am not really in a shopping mood so I depart the duty free in favor of sitting at my gate staring blankly ahead waiting to board the plane

Getting on board is where Heathrow really steps it up. Nothing major, just something to let you know they care. As you may be aware international travel is less than pleasant, especially when ocean crossing is involved. Most people, while not being angry, are definitely not pleased to be boarding a trans Atlantic flight, and the folks at Heathrow feel your pain and have come up with a solution.

We live in a very security conscious world and have grown to accept certain things as unavoidable parts of our lives. Uniformed military men carrying assault rifles, multiple strip searches, and limited hair care products, would have felt out of place on September 10th 2001, but now are just a matter of course. In general, airports feel less comfortable and inviting these days. Well, leave it to the fine folks at LHR to fix that. As you board the plane you pass a security dog who, most likely, has been trained to smell guns, or bombs, or fear, it really could be anything. But instead of a massive German Sheppard or Rottweiler you cleared by a Beagle.

Now, I ask you, is it possible to be angry or stressed when being greeted by the smiling face of an adorable Beagle puppy? No, no it is not. I do realize that there is some credibility lost here. I mean, a security dog should not evoke the response, “Who’s a good boy? Who is? That’s right, you are! You’re the big sweetie.” But it does have a wonderful calming effect, especially when you are flying with Dre and Eazy on NWA, who still hold the “everyone rushing toward the gate at the same time” as the ideal boarding procedure. Thankfully I have a bulk head and, with the smile from the puppy still on my face, I settle in. Nobody in front of me I can stretch out, fall asleep sitting up straight and drift off, dreaming of barbeque and long necks as the plane pulls back to taxi, inching me back home.

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