DAY 2 - SATURDAY 4TH AUGUST
It’s the usual
restless night in an airport hotel. The room is very nice and the
bed is comfy, but the efficient air conditioning is a little
noisy. To be fair, even if it were whisper quiet, it probably
wouldn’t make any difference to the way I sleep.
At 6.00am we are all awake. Due to this being an exciting day, I
decide The Old Grey Mare should be performed and launch into an
enthusiastic rendition. Other than derisory laughter there is
little response from my audience. Even the finale, where I dive
from the top of the wardrobe into a glass of water while juggling
pomegranates, receives nothing but polite applause. These people
know nothing about fine art.
Around 7.00am we catch the shuttle bus to the airport. There is a
lot of improvement work going on at Heathrow and parts of the
airport, particularly around the Virgin check-in desks, are a
real mess.
Despite this there is a very short queue for baggage drop off and
we are done and dusted very quickly.
Security for entry into the departure lounge is not too bad and
we are through by 8.00am.
We all have bagels for breakfast, except Georgia who has a pastry
thing with raisins in .
Some (thankfully) light shopping follows where I buy a book
(Peter Kay’s Sound of Laughter) and Ind buys make up.
It’s all going very smoothly as we board the VS003 to New
York at 9.00am. It’s an Airbus with a 2-4-2 seat
configuration and we have two rows of two behind each other.
Georgia and I are sat together and there is a discussion over who
gets the window seat. Unfortunately there are a few tears until
Georgia agrees to let me have the window seat for takeoff.
Woohoo!
We pull back from the gate on time at 9.30am, but then sit on the
tarmac for 30 minutes due to, and stop me if I get too technical
for you here, lots of aeroplanes taking off and landing.
We taxi to the runway and sit there for a while before the plane
turns around and heads back to the terminal. I’m just in the
process of telling Tam this doesn’t look good when an
announcement over the tannoy tells us that there is a computer
fault and we are returning to the gate for an engineer to take a
look. I told them not to upgrade to Vista!
The engineers clamber on board and start fiddling. (With the
computer, they’re not playing the violin). I swear I can
hear faint mutterings of ‘I hate bleedin’
computers’ and ‘Have you tried pressing
Ctrl-Alt-Del?’
System re-booted, problem solved we’re off and running.
Problem solved? I think not. As we taxi towards the runway
another announcement tells us the computer is playing up again
and we are returning to the stand. This ain’t fun anymore.
Time passes. The offending piece of software has now been
‘locked out’ whatever that means. Let’s hope it
isn’t the ‘deploy landing gear’ software.
We’ve been sat on the plane for 4 ½ hours when we push back
from the gate again.
And at the third time of asking, we’re off! Tam suggests I
do The Old Grey Mare in celebration. She says I can wear a sock
to protect my modesty. I’ll leave you to guess where that
is, suffice to say it would need to be a big sock.
I choose to watch Shrek 3 and Spiderman 3. I think this quite
appropriate given that it took us 3 tries to get airborne.
Of the two I prefer Spiderman. It’s all action and we get a
couple of new villains. I think the Shrek franchise may be
reaching the end of the line. Not that it’s a particularly
bad film, just that it’s getting a bit old now.
We finally clamber off the plane at 4.00pm local time, 3 ½ hours
late. The queue at immigration is the usual huge snaking line,
but we are through and picking up our luggage by 5.00pm.
Unfortunately one of the cases has not made it intact. I
can’t think why, after all I paid nearly £5 for it in
China. The wheels have broken off and I can’t carry the
thing all holiday, so we have to buy a set of wheels for it for
$30. The only alternatives in the airport luggage shop are
suitcases costing $500! No thanks.
We ring Elaine and Michael (who we are staying with for the next
2 nights) to let them know we have just landed and head off to
catch the Air Train to Jamaica Station ($5 per person). This is a
driverless train you so often find at airports, but it zips along
at a fair rate. As I look out of the window I can’t believe
what I see, there are a bunch of blokes playing cricket! See,
these Yanks are civilised after all.
At Jamaica Station we switch to the Long Island Railroad to Penn
Station ($3 per person). At this point we have a bit of bad luck
as we’ve just missed the 6.11pm train to Short Hills and
have to wait nearly an hour for the next.
At least this gives us the chance to give the girls their first
glimpse of Manhattan. You come out of Penn Station by Madison
Square Garden (Beyonce is playing tonight) and you can see the
Empire State Building. It’s very warm and muggy even at this
time of the evening; lord knows what it’s going to feel like
in the middle of the day.
The train out to Short Hills takes about 45 minutes and is an
interesting mix of industrial areas just outside of Manhattan
giving way to prettier small towns and suburbs. It’s
certainly been an interesting way of getting from the airport
rather than taking a cab.
Michael is there to meet us at the station. Elaine used to go to
school with Tam many years ago. I think they used to share a
slate. She’s lived and worked in America for many years and
married Michael 3 years ago. They now have 2 children, Grace
(2years old) and Alex (7 months).
Their house is just a couple of minutes from the station and is
lovely. It’s in a quiet street with lots of trees and
greenery. They’ve only been there a few months and are
slowly doing it up. That’s my kind of decorating, slow.
Michael cooks hot dogs on the BBQ for us and it’s lovely to
sit out in the garden on a balmy evening listening to the
cicad…. shika…. chica…. listening to the crickets,
which are incredibly loud.
We chat for a while enabling Tam to fill in Elaine with all the
gossip from our hometown. The girls are starting to flag a little
now, so we all have quick showers and it’s off to bed by
10.30pm.
I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced such a long day of
travelling before, with all the delays and everything, but
it’s certainly been interesting.