This is it. It’s finally time to go home. I can’t wait. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen of the United Kingdom – and I think anyone would agree that I’ve seen a lot – but I’m ready to be back in my own home with my own bathroom and my family. FYI, there are no actual trains in this story, just busses, planes and cars.
We had to get up at an ungodly hour to get our traveling done. I didn’t get to sleep last night until midnight, and I had to wake up at 4:00am. Not even chickens or farmers are up that early! We caught a cab at 5:00 from York to Leeds so that we could catch the 6:45 flight from Leeds-Bradford International Airport to Heathrow International in London. The first flight was no sweat; nothing to really get excited about. I was sitting in the very first row of the plane on an aisle seat, so I had plenty of leg room to stretch out. Lugging my bags around was a pain in the ass, but that’s what I get for packing so much. I’ve learned my lesson and will be packing just a bit less when I go to Dublin in October.
Once we got to Heathrow, we still had to catch a bus across town to Gatwick for our flight back to Dallas. That involved a bus ride. They have it set up so that there’s a bus company that regularly drives people back and forth between the two airports. Too bad today was not one of their better organized days. There were three busses labeled for Gatwick at the stop, but only one of them was actually going. To top that off, the woman driving the bus didn’t normally do that route and didn’t know exactly where she was going. She made it from the stop to the next terminal at Heathrow by following the signs. She then had to get directions from one of the passengers to get to Gatwick. I thought it was quite funny. The guy sitting next to me looked like he was going to explode. The bus was crowded, and since we were all going from one airport to another, there was a lot of baggage. There was this one Indian couple that looked like they were using the bus as a moving van. They had these four huge boxes that they had to get stuffed into the baggage compartment, and we were wondering if the bus was going to have enough room to take anyone else’s luggage. Luckily there was just enough room to squeeze everything in.
Once we arrived at Gatwick it was time for the first of three very intensive security interrogations. The guy that questioned me at the ticket counter thought that he’d caught me in a lie. He asked if I had been anywhere outside the UK during my three weeks there, and I said no. Then he tore the luggage tags off my baggage that I’d left on from Heathrow. He had a hard time understanding that I’d already flown once today, but I think I finally convinced him that I wasn’t a terrorist or a criminal. We got out tickets and proceeded to security checkpoint #2. This was where they scanned our bags and our persons for dangerous object. One of the guys in our party was pulled out of line for some additional screening after his carry-ons went through. I wonder what he had in there, and I wonder how he enjoyed the full body cavity search.
So now I’m sitting on an airplane typing this out. I think we just went over Manchester a few minutes ago. I’m betting that I’m going to lose track of where we are pretty quick. It’s a nice plane I think. In some ways nice than the one I went to the UK on and in some ways not. I think that it’s nicer because it’s the one that’s taking me home, but the flight to the UK had better accommodations. I’m willing to accept that trade-off.
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