the joys of travelling

So I’m stuck in a hotel in London, listening to storm outside. Right, exactly. After two months of pretty much nothing but sunny, balmy days, a big storm rolls in just as I want to leave the country.

Sometimes getting from one place to another is straightforward enough. Other times it isn’t. Not much today has happened quite the way it was supposed to.

For starters, when I got up somebody else was using the shower. I’m pretty sure this is only the second time in two months that somebody else has been in the shower when I wanted to use it. This only delayed me a few minutes.

Then it turned out that there were no available taxis in the city. The porter called three agencies. One of them thought they might have one available about half an hour after I needed it. So I walked. Two miles. Dragging around 130 lbs. of luggage. On sidewalks littered with branches. In case you’ve never noticed, the wheels on suitcases are pretty small and don’t handle obstacles very well. By the time I got to the bus station, my arms were so tired that I couldn’t close one of my hands.

Also, I naturally got there later than I had planned. But at that point I thought things would still work out fine. It turned out the main road into London was closed due to a traffic accident. I’m not sure how reliable my source is, but last I heard the story was the accident was bad enough to have kept the road shut from 7am to at least 2pm. Anyway, the bus got to London 1 1/2 to 2 hours late.

This was bad for two reasons. First, obviously, it made me later than I wanted to be. Second, it meant I had to spend more time sitting next to some people next to whom I would rather not have sat. There was an elderly couple sitting behind me. They talked the whole time. While eating what must have been a suitcase full of candies. So I get to listen to a pile of candies slipping and clanking around in their mouths, with the slipping and clanking interrupted periodically by a sound akin to a rock crusher as a candy got put out of its misery. And then a girl boarded the bus listening to some obnoxious music on her beloved pink ipod with the volume turned up way too high. The seat next to mine was the only free one on the bus. Perfectly ghastly.

Anyway, once we get to London, I get on the express train that runs to the airport. By now I’m thinking that my chances of leaving today are rather slim, especially once I realize that the train isn’t exactly an express train today since they’re worried about crosswinds. But I talk to a Norwegian fellow who’s next to me and he tells me that he thinks the average flight out of Gatwick is delayed by a couple of hourse because of the weather. So I’m thinking there may be some hope yet.

But, no, my flight would have to be the one that departed on time. I get to the airport half an hour before my flight is supposed to depart, in order to hear an airline agent tell me that it is illegal for them to let anyone board who arrives that late. So that was that. Oh, and, of course, the accident isn’t the airline’s fault, so I get to foot the bill. Lovely.

Fortunately, things are just bad enough that they’re kind of fun.

Sydney