Time Travel and 53 Steps
Sunday, June 10, 2017
AJ flit through the house, picking up wayward items and putting them in their place and stopping periodically to brush cat hair from her jacket and pants. She wiped a counter here, decluttered there.
Their flight wasn’t until 4:30pm Chicago Time, which left her ample time to try to leave the house a little more tidy, while bugging OneSon with questions and instructions. He was staying home from this trip to house-sit and work at the beach.
“There is chicken in the freezer you can have for dinner, and leftovers in the fridge. Use the toaster oven for the chicken. I brushed the cats, but you can take them outside for another brushing, they could use it. The house plants should be okay. You know how to water the plants out front, right? You take the hose from the side and …”
“Yes, I know,” OneSon replied, restraining annoyance from his voice.
“Order pizza and have friends over for a game night,” B suggested.
“Yeah, I might,” he mumbled, with a smirk.
After hugs and final luggage checks, B, AJ and TwoSon loaded the car and left. The drive to the airport was periodically slow and sunny, uneventful except that B’s car hit 100,000 miles.
The shuttle bus driver from the parking garage to the airport mistook TwoSon for a girl. But the metal-detector usher in security didn’t. “I’m going to count how many times that mistake happens,” TwoSon said.
“Should’ve got your hair cut shorter,” B said. AJ admired TwoSon’s reaction-he didn’t seem to get too upset about the mistakes, he liked his hair long and that was that. But he was waiting eagerly for the day when he could grow a beard.
Once through the hassle and awkward juggling luggage through security, B lead the family to a large paneled glass door that slid open elegantly, opening to a reception area with two women at desks. He had saved up “Extra-Special Airport Lounge” free passes (not the extra-extra special lounge passes, not United Airline’s Polaris Lounge) which let the family eat, drink and rest in surprising peace and comfort.
Free Wi-Fi induced most patrons of this special club (of which the family were only free-pass intruders) to open electronics immediately upon sitting down. B and TwoSon were no different except they waited until they finished eating to indulge. AJ, after a snack of salad and nuts, leafed through The Agenda*, determined to know more of the finer details of where they were going, when and how.
“This land is old–as in, people have been inhabiting it a lot longer than over here. I mean, large populations have been there. And the landscape will be so different,” AJ commented as she flipped through pictures of castles and stone mansions.
“Mmm.”
“I think you’re a grand-vista and night sky type photographer, no people,” AJ said, wanting a little more from B.
“Yeah, no people, not anymore.”
As most patrons buried themselves in electronics, AJ looked around, taking in details of furniture, surroundings, people.
It would be a long wait, but a nice one. “If everyone could be treated like this, it would make flying more pleasant, I bet,” AJ said. “… and more expensive.”
To AJ, airports were a place full of grave seriousness, hurry, strife and downright depression. She rarely saw a happy or contented face there, the workers and flyers were never cheerful, excepting little kids going to Disneyland.
The lounge slowly became noisy and crowded. An extended family traveling to Israel for a bar mitzvah, single travelers checking in and out, and another family looking as if they were on their way to somewhere tropical were just a few AJ noticed. The noise and voice level rose with each new traveler, and in between bouts of scribbling, she watched.
The family’s passes were complimentary, but the privilege usually cost a lot, or required frequent flyer miles. And people paid, depending on their reaction to waiting.
“This is how people react to waiting, boredom, the time before things happen,” she thought. They drink, eat, submerse themselves in tech, read (not many), watch TV (baseball on the screen) or talk.
The 1 1/2 hour flight from Chicago to Newark Airport was uneventful and easy. On their way to their next gate, they passed windows framing dozens of planes fronting a background of the NYC skyline.
At the gate, while they stood in boarding lines, their wait to board the plane stretched on an unforeseen 45 extra minutes. AJ’s feet, prone to pain if stationary too long, foreshadowed an equally miserable flight.
Whenever AJ flew on planes, at least one part of the journey involved agonizing torture in the form of one or all of the following: sleeplessness, restless-leg syndrome, loud neighbors or seat-kickers. The flight to London was filled with all the above, except the last. Fate would save the seat-kicker for her flight back.
She tried to alleviate the torture by breaking it up with the audio book Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott, eating the pacifying, distracting and unneeded food the flight attendants handed out, and combing over The Agenda.
After 7-hours in the air, they had skipped ahead 5 hours in time to successfully land in United Kingdom’s London, England.
At London’s Heathrow Airport, after a bathroom stop, they shuffled through snaking cordoned lines to get through UK customs, dragging their luggage behind them, entertained by eavesdropping on a friendly conversation between two Canadians behind them.
Once through customs, the first stop was at the Tube, or London’s train system, Heathrow Station, for Oyster cards (train passes), and then a crowded, hot ride to their first stop: Baker Street Station. It was Sunday, people were out shopping and enjoying the sunny warm weather, and piling into the trains.
As the they hugged the train walls, pulling luggage out of the way, the conductor urged space economy in the first English-accented voice the family encountered, “Please move into the center of the car. There is lots of space there, people look in and think there is no room, but there is …”
Once out of the Baker Street station, the family, dragging and tripping over their luggage, followed B, who was following Google maps over narrow sidewalks and weird traffic patterns. They walked past the Sherlock Holmes Museum, at 221b, through rushing herds of people who looked simply annoyed at lugguge-lugging pedestrians. Out of the rush and bustle of busy streets, they came to a quiet street that would be their home for the next four days, 57 Balcombe Street.
After a few messages to the Airbnb proprietor, a woman in a yellow and green Brazil tee-shirt came walking toward them.
“B?” she asked. “So sorry, I stepped out to the laundry. Please come on up. I just have a few last touches and then the rooms will be ready.”
She unlocked the large black door, swinging it open to reveal a small hallway that lead to stairs. She hurried up the stairs. “It’s all the way to the top,” she said, not waiting for the travel-weary, heavy suitcase-dragging family.
When the hostess left, they opened their luggage, picked things out, changed clothes and let out a sigh of relief.
They left the flat for lunch at an Italian place, stopped at a cell phone store for a SIM card (because AJ’s cell phone, which was supposed to work (but expensively) in the UK, constantly showed the “No service” message despite re-configuring and multiple shut-downs). On the way back to the flat, they stopped in at a Tesco (a chain grocery store) for water and breakfast foods.
“I had a notion that all English people drank loose leaf tea,” she said as she scanned the tea shelves to find nothing but bagged tea. She reluctantly chose a box of Twinnings green tea bags.
Back at the flat, the family lay down for a short nap amid the daily street noise of motorcycles, voices, cars and sirens in the distance.
After the much-needed rest they set out for some sights, walking cautiously through the new and foreign traffic patterns around Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, where they perused a garden of bronze statues including Abraham Lincoln and a Quasimodo-ish Winston Churchill.
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| "Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty..."** |
Along the river, they eyed the London Eye, then stopped in the nearby McDonald's for a treat. The London Eye, though a large part of the London landscape, was never especially recommended, even by the locals. “It’s overrated, a long wait, your time’s better spent elsewhere,” they said. So, the family didn’t.
AJ and TwoSon left B to roam the area for night pictures, and they headed back to the flat. After letting Google maps lead her the opposite direction on Baker Street for a block or two, past little restaurants, travel apparel shops, curio stands and darkened cafes, AJ turned around and eventually made it back to the flat. (Google maps is difficult to follow when you are walking, or just starting your route b/c it has a hard time knowing where you are and what direction you’re heading.)
She waited by the open window three stories above the street, studying the Agenda and listening for B, not trusting the messaging on their new UK phone number. In an hour or two, she heard footsteps below, looked out, and saw B. "I'll let you in," she called from above.
106 steps later, (up and down), AJ and the rest of the family settled down to end their first typical-touristy day in the United Kingdom.
*The Agenda. With a life of it’s own, The Agenda is the itinerary, carefully and painstakingly put together by B, with input from AJ and TwoSon. It contains plans, schedules, directions, pictures, insider tips, reservations, tickets, confirmations, photographic information, astronomical charts and so much more. It was and always will be part of the family when they travel.
** "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" a poem by William Wordsworth
** "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" a poem by William Wordsworth
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