WOT- Seanery's excellent UK adventure, with the Walking With Dinosaurs Tour Options

[seanery]

Ok, others mentioned it, and it sounded like a good idea at the time so here goes.

Early Wednesday I fire up the 951, throw a bike on the bike rack and head off to U-Store to store it while I'm gone. Great idea, the price is right, the size is perfect and it's secure and away from the elements! Well, it started raining while I was filling out the paperwork, so I got a nice little ride home in the rain. It was only 3 or so miles, so it was quick.

I finish packing and have enough time to clean the bathroom before I shower and wait for the cab. Cabbie shows up and he's in a minivan - yeah! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cheer.gif) All of my bags are way, way, way overweight, and big! Cabbie's cool gets me to the airport quickly, things are going great.

I go to the checkin kiosk, swipe my passport, click "select seat" just to see if a better seat has opened up and guess what - 12B is open! WOO HOO!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) That's a 26 row jump! Yeah Me! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cheer.gif)

I go through security, all is good and I'm waiting at the gate a little under 2 hours early. Early, so nothing can go wrong, right? Yeah, well, no. There was some rain in Indy, and I guess Chicago got some, too. It couldn't have been that bad because United and SouthWest both kept their IND/ORD and ORD/IND flights on schedule. American, on the other hand, cancels their 1:30 flight which puts all the flights after it into chaos. That chaos lasted at least until 6:10 when my 4:30 flight finally took off. 6:10 in Indy is 5:10 in Chicago. My flight to Manchester, UK leaves Chicago at 5:40. Guess who missed their flight? Yup, I did (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) No other flights to Manchester, but there's a flight that leaves in 3 hours that goes through London and arrives in Manchester at 2:40pm - almost 8 hours later! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) That sucks, and so do the AA counter staff that I dealt with at O'hare. (Pardon me, I'm terribly distracted by the guy who sat down 4 seats away from me who is eating Potato Crisps (correct word, right, for a chip in the UK?) with his mouth open. It's incredibly loud and insanely annoying!)

Flight 46 was uneventful, except the guy in front of me broke his seat and it leaned back about 5 inches farther than everyone else. Oh, and the same buffoon got up from the seat directly in front of me about 15 seconds before the plane took off and proceeded to move to the seat directly behind me. The flight attendants where yelling at him and he didn't even notice. His wife, did something similar, about 5-7 minutes after the flight took off she stood and went to the row behind me to talk to her husband then walked up the aisle towards the lav. Once again, the flight attendants got on the intercom and said, "hey sit down, the captain won't even let US up yet, let alone passengers." She didn't hear and got yelled at. Morons.

I lost - of all things - my bicycle lock at the UK security checkpoint. I guess locked bikes are a bad thing here? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif) Oh yeah, I was picking up one of the tubs to put my computer stuff in and it stuck a bit then released quickly from the bottom conveyer and popped up and smacked me in the lip, where it instantly swelled up and started to bleed! Man, this is gonna be a great trip! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

So, now, I'm in London, waiting for my 1:30 flight to Manchester. I hope there is a car waiting to pick me up as I'm the only one coming in so late!

More to come, cameras will get unloaded tomorrow and batteries charged. Ooh, and I get my Trek T1 out, so I can exercise and get around a bit on my own.