![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeBy my reckoning, this was the longest day of the Worldcon trip due to traveling from BST to PST.
I was up at 0600 so as to be sure I would have lots of slack in my schedule for my 1100 flight out of London Heathrow. I can see why the hotel staffer who upgraded me last night called this a room that airplane buffs would like, as it had an excellent view of Heathrow Airport.
I checked in for my flight online, repacked my bags for "airline flight mode" including putting my Dangerous Terrorist Weapon (i.e. my nail clippers) into my checked luggage and confirming that the lithium batteries for the video camera were in my carry-on, then checked out. Weighing the four bags later (one large checked suitcase that by itself weighed 22.3 kg, the smaller WFC 2021 checked duffel bag, one carry on computer bag that I'm glad they didn't weigh because it exceeded the official limit, and my WFC 2009 canvas bag), I found that I was carrying 43 kg (95 pounds) of bags. No wonder my back hurts.
Getting from the hotel to the airport was easy because the bus stop is right across the street. In daylight we could see that there were small signs for the stop on the other side of Bath Road (where we arrived last night) that said the pedestrian crossing was 450 m away, which is quite a hike with a lot of luggage, even if the heaviest one is on wheels. In contrast, going to the airport is easy: a bus arrived shortly (£1 fare, paid by tapping my credit card for the equivalent $1.32) and around five minutes later we were at Heathrow Central Bus Station. There we piled the luggage onto a cart and without rush went to Terminal 2 and checked the bags. We had a relatively relaxed light breakfast at Caffè Nero before dispatching me to Terrorization. This went pretty smoothly as their machines didn't need me to take my computers out, nor did I had to take off my shoes, although I did need to remove my belt.
I am not the only person who has described Heathrow as a shopping mall with runways rather than as an airport. I had too much stuff to carry already and was not at all tempted by anything. In case you've never flown here, the way it works is that you stay in the central waiting (shopping) area until they announce that you should go to your gate, thereby increasing the chance that you'll buy something.
Thanks to my easy-going schedule, they had already posted the gate for my flight and the status had just changed to Go To Gate by the time I got to the waiting area. It was about a fifteen minute walk.
I'd managed to go more than 45 days in the UK without contracting COVID or anything else, and I was trying to keep up that record. Besides, my flight was completely full. I was traveling on points but had upgraded to Economy Plus for this trip. This was the first time I'd flown on a 787 that I recall. I'd booked myself into the right seat of the center section of the last row of the 3-3-3 seating. Some people find being close to the lavatory annoying. I find it reassuring.
The flight was, well, long. I was surprised that it wasn't a lot different time than flying to SFO. I watched a couple of movies and a documentary and finished reading Christian Wolmar's The Liberation Line, the story of railroading's role in the liberation of western Europe in World War II. This is something that has been relatively overlooked, especially as most people think that it's all about the Red Ball Express and lots of trucks, which were important, but without railroads, the invasion might have failed, and certainly would have taken longer and cost many more lives.
We made it to Denver without incident. Clearing Immigration was surprisingly fast. I reclaimed my two checked bags. They bashed the corner of my large bag again, although not as badly as on the outbound flight; I didn't have to hammer it back into shape. I rolled the bags to Luggage Recheck and went where they pointed me to do. To my surprise, that just spits you back out groundside and you have to walk back over to Terrorization. I had sprung for a first class upgrade for this final flight of the trip, but it was not until I was well into the huge queue at South Security at DEN that I saw the somewhat shorter queue for Priority passengers like me. Furthermore, I had the misfortune to initially get in a queue where they were training someone and the line was moving like tree sap in winter. Eventually, when a gap opened, I jumped to a shorter queue, where they also had the machines that didn't require me to take out my three laptop computers. I still had to take off my shoes and belt, though.
There was no hurry, however, as I had a 5h30m layover here. I took the inter-terminal train (shown above) to Terminal A initially and had lunch there. Because the first hour in Denver was what it took to get out of my flight and re-clear Terrorization, I decided not to spring for the day pass to the United Club. I'm still not sure if that was the right call, but it did save some money as while I had two lunches at different restaurants in the airport and bought several sodas, it still cost less than the Club pass.
My flight to Denver was a long way out Terminal B. Boarding initially seemed to go very smoothly, and I thankfully settled into seat 2B, but as we were nearing the end of the process the lights went out briefly. That did not seem like a big deal as I've sometimes seen that happen when they disconnect from ground power. But then the pilot announced that they were going to need to reboot the airplane, and that a side-effect of a complete reboot was they they would have to deboard everyone (including our carry-on luggage) and reboard everyone. A groan went up through the plane. We all started to do this, but then before we actually had to leave the pilot announced that they found a way to fix things. I'm not sure if it's exactly the fix, but a a few minutes later a gate agent appeared: apparently the reboot dumped the passenger manifest than they had to go through and re-scanned all of our boarding passes.
As tired as I was, and even in a first class seat, I wasn't as zonked as I'd been flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles last year, so I could not sleep. With such a short (2h30m) flight, there was no meal service, but a moderately nice snack service for those of us up front. I also drank several sparkling sodas, as I was desperately thirsty.
Reno Airport is fairly quiet at 20:30. I reclaimed my large purple bag. The luggage claim belt stopped and I wondered what had happened to my WFC bag. Walking over to the United baggage office, I saw my bag. Apparently it traveled to Reno ahead of me on the earlier flight on which I couldn't because it was already full when I had tried to book.
As I've said, there is a pedestrian path to the Best Western SureStay Hotel from the airport terminal. But they're doing a lot of construction and I couldn't see where the pedestrian path was. It turns out to be out the Taxi area outside of luggage claim, but I didn't see it, and ended up bumbling through the parking garage and eventually getting to the Terminal Way sidewalk, but it meant manhandling that 23 kg bag over a lawn at one point. However, I did manage to check in.
All of my traveling had left me with an acid stomach. I really wanted some milk, but there are no stores near the hotel. I ended up paying more for two pints of milk from the hotel than two gallons costs at the grocery store, but at that point I didn't care.
I was able to use a hotel luggage cart to move my stuff to this pretty generously sized room. And the air conditioning worked, which was wonderful.
This was my Lovely Parting Gift from the UK. I ate a piece of it along with my milk. It was a great relief to wind down.
Before going to bed, I called Lisa (now nine hours ahead of me) and we briefly checked in on her and my travel for today. We still have some travel management for me to do for her, but fortunately it does not have to be done right away.
I got to bed about 22:30 PDT, some twenty five hours after I started this day. Sleep was not a problem.
I was up at 0600 so as to be sure I would have lots of slack in my schedule for my 1100 flight out of London Heathrow. I can see why the hotel staffer who upgraded me last night called this a room that airplane buffs would like, as it had an excellent view of Heathrow Airport.
I checked in for my flight online, repacked my bags for "airline flight mode" including putting my Dangerous Terrorist Weapon (i.e. my nail clippers) into my checked luggage and confirming that the lithium batteries for the video camera were in my carry-on, then checked out. Weighing the four bags later (one large checked suitcase that by itself weighed 22.3 kg, the smaller WFC 2021 checked duffel bag, one carry on computer bag that I'm glad they didn't weigh because it exceeded the official limit, and my WFC 2009 canvas bag), I found that I was carrying 43 kg (95 pounds) of bags. No wonder my back hurts.
Getting from the hotel to the airport was easy because the bus stop is right across the street. In daylight we could see that there were small signs for the stop on the other side of Bath Road (where we arrived last night) that said the pedestrian crossing was 450 m away, which is quite a hike with a lot of luggage, even if the heaviest one is on wheels. In contrast, going to the airport is easy: a bus arrived shortly (£1 fare, paid by tapping my credit card for the equivalent $1.32) and around five minutes later we were at Heathrow Central Bus Station. There we piled the luggage onto a cart and without rush went to Terminal 2 and checked the bags. We had a relatively relaxed light breakfast at Caffè Nero before dispatching me to Terrorization. This went pretty smoothly as their machines didn't need me to take my computers out, nor did I had to take off my shoes, although I did need to remove my belt.
I am not the only person who has described Heathrow as a shopping mall with runways rather than as an airport. I had too much stuff to carry already and was not at all tempted by anything. In case you've never flown here, the way it works is that you stay in the central waiting (shopping) area until they announce that you should go to your gate, thereby increasing the chance that you'll buy something.
Thanks to my easy-going schedule, they had already posted the gate for my flight and the status had just changed to Go To Gate by the time I got to the waiting area. It was about a fifteen minute walk.
I'd managed to go more than 45 days in the UK without contracting COVID or anything else, and I was trying to keep up that record. Besides, my flight was completely full. I was traveling on points but had upgraded to Economy Plus for this trip. This was the first time I'd flown on a 787 that I recall. I'd booked myself into the right seat of the center section of the last row of the 3-3-3 seating. Some people find being close to the lavatory annoying. I find it reassuring.
The flight was, well, long. I was surprised that it wasn't a lot different time than flying to SFO. I watched a couple of movies and a documentary and finished reading Christian Wolmar's The Liberation Line, the story of railroading's role in the liberation of western Europe in World War II. This is something that has been relatively overlooked, especially as most people think that it's all about the Red Ball Express and lots of trucks, which were important, but without railroads, the invasion might have failed, and certainly would have taken longer and cost many more lives.
We made it to Denver without incident. Clearing Immigration was surprisingly fast. I reclaimed my two checked bags. They bashed the corner of my large bag again, although not as badly as on the outbound flight; I didn't have to hammer it back into shape. I rolled the bags to Luggage Recheck and went where they pointed me to do. To my surprise, that just spits you back out groundside and you have to walk back over to Terrorization. I had sprung for a first class upgrade for this final flight of the trip, but it was not until I was well into the huge queue at South Security at DEN that I saw the somewhat shorter queue for Priority passengers like me. Furthermore, I had the misfortune to initially get in a queue where they were training someone and the line was moving like tree sap in winter. Eventually, when a gap opened, I jumped to a shorter queue, where they also had the machines that didn't require me to take out my three laptop computers. I still had to take off my shoes and belt, though.
There was no hurry, however, as I had a 5h30m layover here. I took the inter-terminal train (shown above) to Terminal A initially and had lunch there. Because the first hour in Denver was what it took to get out of my flight and re-clear Terrorization, I decided not to spring for the day pass to the United Club. I'm still not sure if that was the right call, but it did save some money as while I had two lunches at different restaurants in the airport and bought several sodas, it still cost less than the Club pass.
My flight to Denver was a long way out Terminal B. Boarding initially seemed to go very smoothly, and I thankfully settled into seat 2B, but as we were nearing the end of the process the lights went out briefly. That did not seem like a big deal as I've sometimes seen that happen when they disconnect from ground power. But then the pilot announced that they were going to need to reboot the airplane, and that a side-effect of a complete reboot was they they would have to deboard everyone (including our carry-on luggage) and reboard everyone. A groan went up through the plane. We all started to do this, but then before we actually had to leave the pilot announced that they found a way to fix things. I'm not sure if it's exactly the fix, but a a few minutes later a gate agent appeared: apparently the reboot dumped the passenger manifest than they had to go through and re-scanned all of our boarding passes.
As tired as I was, and even in a first class seat, I wasn't as zonked as I'd been flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles last year, so I could not sleep. With such a short (2h30m) flight, there was no meal service, but a moderately nice snack service for those of us up front. I also drank several sparkling sodas, as I was desperately thirsty.
Reno Airport is fairly quiet at 20:30. I reclaimed my large purple bag. The luggage claim belt stopped and I wondered what had happened to my WFC bag. Walking over to the United baggage office, I saw my bag. Apparently it traveled to Reno ahead of me on the earlier flight on which I couldn't because it was already full when I had tried to book.
As I've said, there is a pedestrian path to the Best Western SureStay Hotel from the airport terminal. But they're doing a lot of construction and I couldn't see where the pedestrian path was. It turns out to be out the Taxi area outside of luggage claim, but I didn't see it, and ended up bumbling through the parking garage and eventually getting to the Terminal Way sidewalk, but it meant manhandling that 23 kg bag over a lawn at one point. However, I did manage to check in.
All of my traveling had left me with an acid stomach. I really wanted some milk, but there are no stores near the hotel. I ended up paying more for two pints of milk from the hotel than two gallons costs at the grocery store, but at that point I didn't care.
I was able to use a hotel luggage cart to move my stuff to this pretty generously sized room. And the air conditioning worked, which was wonderful.
This was my Lovely Parting Gift from the UK. I ate a piece of it along with my milk. It was a great relief to wind down.
Before going to bed, I called Lisa (now nine hours ahead of me) and we briefly checked in on her and my travel for today. We still have some travel management for me to do for her, but fortunately it does not have to be done right away.
I got to bed about 22:30 PDT, some twenty five hours after I started this day. Sleep was not a problem.
