My Last Day of Freedom...
(wasted on a plane)
y the time I got to the last day of my vacation, I was
definitely ready to go home. It wasn't that I was tired of Scotland, Wales, or
even England, or that I was tired of riding around on trains. The truth was that
I wasn't tired of any of that. I was just tired of being away from home. More
than anything else, I wanted to go home.
I just wasn't too hot on the mechanics of getting there.
Oh, to be sure, it did mean having one last train ride. One lousy train ride from Reading to Gatwick like this was probably the biggest waste of a day's worth of rail pass I could imagine, and it was only mitigated by the fact that I was leaving the UK with two more unused days on my rail pass. As I've already mentioned several times, this made me feel somewhat like a failure in the implementation of my vacation, so using a sixth day of the pass, even for something so trivial, did take a bit of the sting off.
It was an excessively short, and somewhat unsatisfying train ride,
too. The only part of my last train ride that was at all memorable was finding
one last bit of evidence that the British are in serious need of help in naming
their towns.
No, it wasn't the train ride that was bothering me. The specific aspect of getting home that I was dreading the most was getting back on an airplane. Flashback memories of that number 1 engine pylon didn't help much, either.
And, if the prospect of getting on an airliner wasn't bad enough,
it also meant going to an airport first, and even worse, it meant going to
Gatwick Airport which, I believe, has been voted the world's dowdiest airport.
Bleah.
This is the "far too much single malt scotch." As is obvious, it's only one bottle. What may not be apparent is that I paid an outlandish price for it at the duty-free shop. Well, I was intrigued by it when I first saw it, and it was my last chance to buy some. At least I got a free Glenmorangie tee-shirt out of the deal.
I'll tell you what wasn't dowdy about it, though. It's something that I must have missed on the way in: police carrying automatic weapons, with their fingers on the triggers. Just walking around, with short barreled things, with collapsible stocks, and what looked like magazines of about 50 rounds of 9mm ammunition. I guess this is just the sort of thing you can expect when there isn't one of those pesky "Bill of Rights" things getting in the way of the police.
I haven't seen people walking around in public, carrying automatic
weapons since I went to Czechoslovakia in 1969, and even then, the automatic
weapons weren't urban assault weapons, just standard old AK-47s. Interestingly, the
idea of carrying automatic weapons around in public went over so well in
Czechoslovakia, that there isn't a Czechoslovakia anymore. One wonders whether a
similar fate is in store for our friends of the Union Jack.
I don't know whether it was because I was in shock over having guns
pointed at me, or if it's because I was just totally worn out, but nothing
really interesting happened during the flight out. I spent far too much money at
the duty free shops, buying far too much
single malt scotch, got onto the plane, and went back to Boston.
Unfortunately, the plane was
about half full, so I didn't get a chance to lay down. Then again, my sleep
schedule was so screwed up by now, I'd completely forgot how to sleep.
And, wonder of all wonders, the flight actually arrived in Boston on time. Huh.
The end of the trip showed me one distinct advantage to being a bit circumferentially challenged. It is no secret among my friends that I have transcended the state of "pleasingly plump," and gone on to "disgustingly obese." It is no secret because this is the sort of thing that's impossible to keep a secret from friends.
Normally, being such a good imitation sphere has disadvantages. For instance, having to shop at stores with cutesy names like "Hefty Miss," or "Lot-ta-luv." Travelling in such a state is no picnic, either; sitting next to someone in coach on the plane is unbearable for both of us (sitting next to someone like me even more so), and even having the row to myself can be hazardous: I keep getting stuck between the armrests.
It causes me to do strange things: like not having any friends that I have to reveal this non-secret to. It makes me want to avoid people before they get a chance to avoid me first. It makes me feel isolated, if not downright dissociative, whenever the conversation turns to bathing suits. More importantly, it means never putting a picture of myself on my web pages, substituting my poor defenseless cats instead.
Until now, I thought there simply weren't any advantages to carrying around 100 pounds of excess baggage, but I'm happy to report that I found one:
Unlike my younger years, when I was a svelte 5'8" tall (instead of wide), and only 125 pounds, nowadays I find that the customs officials are completely uninterested in performing a strip search on me. In fact, I would guess they're downright repulsed at the idea. This is something they never tell you at Weight Watchers.
All of this explains why my trip through customs went so smoothly. Maybe I'll put on another 50 for the next trip (yeah, as if I actually plan to put on weight). I only wish this sort of weight force-field repellant worked as well on the parking lot attendant, who saw fit to suck nearly a C note from my pocket. This after lugging my luggage (there's that etymology again) across the entire parking lot, in a scene that felt a lot more like a tractor pull than a walk.
Well, that's it. Aside from a three hour drive home, and a week or
two to convince my cat that he's met me before,
everything in my life quickly (and sadly) returned to normal. All that's left of
my vacation now is a bunch
of fading memories, and this stupid collection of web pages.
And, of course, people still think I'm crazy.
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