It’s Just Poison…

This is the day that marks the beginning of my travel around the world. But really, I should start with yesterday… Wednesday.

I received a gift certificate for my birthday for Ruth’s Chris steakhouse, so I took Nicole out for a nice dinner as it would be my last night in the states before I take off. I had a great steak, some wine, and dessert that I really couldn’t fit in my stomach, but hey… it was free =)

After dinner, I headed home for a little Call of Duty. Wanted to get some in before I left. Also, I was hoping to see Alex online. Alex is a guy from my site that I was supposed to meet up with once I got to London, and as of he, I don’t have contact info, or even a plan on when / where to meet. As luck should have it, Alex signed on around 6am. I played a couple games, and then realized that I had not packed yet… whoops. So I told him I’d see him Friday, signed off, and packed up for the trip.

Shit… totally forgot to get contact info, or even work out a place to meet. I signed back on real quick, but he was gone. Hmmm…

I figured I’d just worry about it tomorrow, it was now almost 7am, and I wanted to get some sleep. Welp… Nicole woke up just as I was going to sleep, so I really didn’t get any sleep. I opted to basically pull an all-nighter and just head to work.

Now on with Thursday!

I get to work and I have 2 goals, make sure all my expenses are in, and get a hold of someone, somehow, about meeting up in London.

First things first… expenses. I have a few weeks of backlog (whoops), but I figured it would only take an hour or two.

Then, the unexpected happens… a client called me, and I had to work… dammit.

I had to be in a car by 4pm to get to JFK on time for my 7pm flight to London Heathrow. It was getting dangerously close to 4, and I hadn’t reached anyone. Crap. The car downstairs is calling me incessantly, my boss wants to talk “real quick”, and I had to send out an email to everyone I knew in London with my proposed plan, and hope someone followed it. My plan was that my flight was to land at 6:30am, and I was going to take the Tube to the hotel and get there by around 8am. I proposed that we just meet up then.

By the time I got to the car, it was quarter after 4. Wasn’t too worried though, I mean, if it was Friday, I may have been a little more concerned. More people leave NYC on Fridays than Thursdays.

As soon as the driver gets outside the tunnel, traffic slows us down to a crawl… wtf? I wasn’t paying too much attention, because I was trying to catch some zzz’s. Then I noticed that we weren’t moving, but the lanes to the left were flowing fine. I asked the driver how long we were just sitting there, and he told me, “About 5 minutes”. “So why the hell don’t get in the left lane?!”… I was cranky, but he switched lanes and we started moving. Turned out that is was a combination of an accident and driver that’s an idiot.

I got to the international departure terminal for my airline, Air India (hey… it was cheap =). The retard takes my backpack and sets it on the edge of the curb, and of course it falls into the street just as a car is pulling away. Would suck if my camera and laptop were in there, oh wait…

Thankfully, someone saw it and pulled it out of the way real quick. I check in and obviously irritated the hell out of the check-in lady for the airline by asking for an exit row seat. She must have found some compassion, because she got it for me. Yay!

The flight to London wound up being an easy flight. The exit row was the kind where I could stretch my legs all the way out and not touch the seats in front of me.

Also had on-demand movies and tv shows (Bollywood mainly). The dinner on the way there wasn’t so hot though. It being an Indian flight, my options were vegetarian curry or non-vegetarian curry. Crap… I hate curry. I tried the non-veggie one for kicks.

I got sucked into the on-demand stuff, and the unlimited free alcohol =).

Next thing I know, I see the sun rising out the window, and we’re starting out decent into Heathrow. Crap, still didn’t sleep, and now I gotta deal with customs. Oh well, at least I’ll speak their language. That’s a bonus.

When I landed, it was Friday morning.

Tags: Travels //