Groundhog Day?

Once again I was up early, and on my way to the airport hoping that today would not be a groundhog day repeat of yesterday's disaster. It didn't begin well, I arrived early at the Aer Lingus check in desk and went through the usual routine, handing me my boarding pass the member of staff said enjoy your flight to Boston...10 minutes later I was unchecked for a flight to Boston that I wasn't booked on and rechecked in for my actual flight to San Francisco via Dublin.

I got through security within 15 minutes and made my way to the departure lounge, and sat down to wait for the departure gate to be announced. I began to get slightly concerned when the time the gate was to be announced came and went with no announcement...then it was 30 minutes past the time it was supposed to be announced. Damn you Bill Murray! I asked a member of the Swissport staff if that was a bad sign and she kindly looked up my flight on Swissport system and told me that it was late coming in from Dublin but that it would be leaving from Gate 1.

After thanking her I made my way along to the Gate and waited. Some time later...I saw the aircraft land and taxi to our gate, it was quite small and propeller driven, but with only a short delay we were in the air. My stopover time in Dublin was now much reduced. I had chosen to go via Dublin because the Irish Government has an agreement with the USA to have a border control post in Dublin airport, so once you clear it in Dublin you don't have to queue up in the USA, and that can save several hours.

The border control was just like any other airport security except they actually made us take off our shoes - even flip flops for those wearing them, it seemed quite pointless but only because it was.

Once through the security I had to join the queue for border control, I was getting nervous as I noted that I only had 15 minutes until my departure gate closed. However, the queue seemed to be moving quickly and within a few moments I was photographed, had my fingerprints scanned and was asked some questions about my trip. For some strange reason I felt like I was guilty of something and expected to be told that my ESTA had been revoked, and be escorted away by two burly security guards. None of which happened, fortunately.

I raced through the airport to get to my gate before it closed only to discover...that it hadn't actually opened, true to form, the Aer Lingus flight was delayed by about 30 minutes. I had plenty of time to go to the toilet and then go to buy a muffin for the flight.

30-40 minutes later than billed we started to board, the flight seemed quite full. I found my seat and was pleasantly surprised at the level of comfort and the amount of legroom. The passenger beside me was a young Irish lad (ginger) on his way to the USA for a wedding with his large family who were all seated in different parts of the cabin. I was very relieved when we started moving. It was going to be a long flight, but I had my kindle, and once I got the TV screen working (it was frozen and had to be rebooted by a member of the cabin crew) I settled down to watch a movie. I started with 65 which seemed to me to be quite derivative of the genre and reminded me of the terrible Will Smith movie Earth. To be fair, it wasn't the worst movie I had ever seen. I tried to watch The Last of Us as a lot of people had been raving about it, but two things struck me immediately, firstly, it was really no different from a dozen other zombie type movies/tv shows I had seen, the twist being that it was caused by a fungus rather than a virus...no one saw that coming.
Secondly, I turned it off because there were a lot of kids on the plane and I didn't think it was really suitable material for them to see, that perhaps makes me look old fashioned but the eyes are the window of the soul.

Several books later we were preparing to land in San Francisco. The flight had been uneventful until about an hour outside SF, a woman started screaming because she thought her child was dead or dying, it turned out that he had had very little to eat and drink that day and after a sugary drink and something to eat he was fine. I felt bad because when she started screaming all I could think was please don't let us be diverted to another airport...

My bag was the very last one to arrive on the conveyor belt, the bag I had put the rucksack in was all torn and the barcode label barely hanging on, still it was there. Not having to go through customs I went straight out to the entrance foyer and saw Meg and her husband Chris, and after hugs and a coffee we headed out to the car.

We had planned to spend two days in Big Sur with an overnight stay in Monterey, but thanks to Aer Lingus, one of those days had been lost. Since the hotel was already paid for we decided to go to Monterey straight from the airport, it was a couple of hours drive, but the chat was free and easy, and the time passed quickly. We found the hotel, went for something to eat, I wasn't hungry. When I flew to Sydney, Australia in 1999 I couldn't eat any food on the plane as the cabin crew couldn't tell me what the ingredients were, but I thought things had probably changed since then, and they had. Every ingredient was listed either on the packaging or the on-board ingredients/allergen list. The food was surprisingly good. However, I had managed to stay awake for a very long time, but it was catching up with me and so it was time for bed. It had been a long and exhausting couple of days, but here I was, in a hotel room in California, I could hardly believe it, roll on tomorrow!Baca lagi