Well, we had hoped to be leaving. But after an extra hour in the terminal chatting to Len and Jill while they tested the engines on the plane, then another hour sitting on the plane while they cleared the backlog from earlier runway damage, we were beginning to wonder if we were ever going to take off. I was also beginning to worry that the valium would wear off before we even got in the air!
We were lucky that as we flew over Berkshire there wasn’t much cloud so we were able to see Windsor Castle and the Thames meandering towards Oxfordshire. Being slow on the uptake (and holding on to Stephanie’s hand until her circulation had ceased) I didn’t have a camera at the ready until we were almost past our home county.
Sunset over mid America
While Stephanie watched a film, I enjoyed my usual inflight entertainment of the moving map. Showing our precise(ish) location it updated the distance to go every half a minute or so.
The first half of the flight was quite smooth, although there was some fairly minor turbulence as we crossed the jet stream (although not too much worse than driving on Berkshire’s roads). Then again once we’d passed Missouri we had to seatbelt up again which was a shame as they only do tea and coffee if it’s smooth so we had to drink water with our clotted cream tea.
As we were so late, the sunset caught up with us just before we landed, this time we had the camera at the ready, and Stephanie managed to catch it at just the right moment.
It’s a shame I don’t enjoy flying, because actually there’s nothing much too it. The biggest worry was whether I’m going to catch the dreadful cough the lady next to me was suffering from.
So after our delayed arrival we finally made it to the hotel airport (15 minutes by shuttle bus) at 10pm local time, 5am UK time. Despite our almost overwhelming tiredness, we were too hungry not to have a snack, so we went down to the hotel sports bar and had an appetiser (each) of cheesy fries. They were excellent, and would have made a substantial main course, being covered as they were in a small mountain of cheese, sour cream and bacon. Delicious, but neither of us managed to make a dent in them. If this is standard, I’m not sure we’ll ever need to order more than 1 appetiser to share for an entire meal!
After nearly falling asleep face first into my chips it was time to hit the hay…
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