Friday, August 06, 2004

back in the good 'ole US of A

well, today was probably the longest day of my life, both figuratively and literally. i woke up this morning at 9:30 and got ready to leave my hotel about an hour later, only then realizing that i forgot to change my alarm clock back to london time - meaning that i had gotten up an hour earlier than i wanted to. no wonder i was tired. so, with my extra hour, i went looking for james (but he had already left - sadness), watched some tv, drank some tea and ate some kind of breakfast. i had only 25 pence for the whole day (like about 50 cents) because i ran out of money and i needed the four pounds i had to get to the airport. so, i ate a smushed breakfast bar left over from the beginning of my trip and pretended that it tasted good. my flight was at 3pm, so i figured i would make it until then. i got to the airport around noon, in plenty of time for my flight, so i just chilled and worked on my journal (i was about two weeks behind). an hour before my flight was supposed to leave, i started to get nervous because they hadn't assigned us a gate yet and we were supposed to start boarding in like 15 minutes. at ten minutes to 3, i really started freaking out and began walking around the terminal looking confused. i finally asked someone official-looking what the deal was, and he said that my flight had been delayed (thanks for telling us!) and that i needed to talk to the virgin atlantic people. ok, fine, so i found their desk. they said that there was some kind of technical difficulties and that it was delayed until 6:30. ugh! but, at least, we got food vouchers (worth like almost $20) so i was able to get some food to eat since i was actually starving at that point. now, this was definitely crappy, but i wasn't upset because i am a very patient person and i understand that things like this happen. and i definitely didn't want to be on a plane that had some kind of technical problem. however, there was also a thunderstorm at the airport while i was waiting, so my feeling is that that had something to do with it as well. my suspicions were confirmed when at 6 we still didn't have our gate yet. so, someone sitting next to me in the terminal who was also on the same flight went to go check on the status and they told her that it was now delayed until 7pm. now, at no time did they make any announcements or anything. the flight board still said "flight vs08 1505 los angeles please wait". i had been staring at that same sign for 6 hours and it hadn't told me anything! argh! sooo, finally around 6:35 they assigned our gate and we all ran over to it, only to wait some more there. i think we finally boarded at like 7:15 and we were all anxious to go, but of course, we couldn't leave yet. we taxied a bit and stuff like that and didn't actually get into the air until 8:15pm!!! so, basically, i spent about 8 hours at heathrow airport today, only to be followed by a 10 and a half hour flight to los angeles. and then, the baggage claim took forever, they moved us to a different terminal, and then finally drove back to my house. it is now 2:20am and i think it's 10:20am (still on europe time - didn't get to sleep much on the plane). oh my, what a long day.

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