Chapter 1: The Journey, In Which Marilyn and Phil Flash Experience Not-So-Much First Class, BritRail as an Antisocial Weapon of Mass Destruction, and Other Strange and Terrible Events
Sep 8th, 2005, 08:39 AM
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 5,107
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Chapter 1: The Journey, In Which Marilyn and Phil Flash Experience Not-So-Much First Class, BritRail as an Antisocial Weapon of Mass Destruction, and Other Strange and Terrible Events
We start our trip by renting a Hyundai from Budget the day before departure. For about $32 we can drive ourselves to the airport and drop the car, cheaper than any alternatives. “I’m not moving a bunch of cars,” says the office manager at Budget. “You can have the Cadillac.” Gee, thanks, but it’s not really necessary, and will only cost us more for gas, but ... ok.
OK until we top off the tank at the airport for 6 gallons at a whopping $20. When we drop the car and complain that it was not possible for us to have driven that much, we’re given forms to fill out. Looking them over, it seems to indicate the last time the mileage was logged was over 1000 miles ago. Not too surprising since the car had obviously not been cleaned, there was a former renter’s food and trash left there, and presumably the car had not been refueled. Or maybe the manager’s brother-in-law borrowed it for the weekend – who knows? But we certainly didn’t drive 1000 miles in the 21 hours we had the car.
After several years of trying to get mileage award seats on American Airlines, we’ve finally splurged 125,000 miles each on First Class tickets to London, returning from Paris. We check in at the First Class counter: Let the pampering begin! Unfortunately, it begins with the news that our seat assignment has been changed to bulkhead seats on the SFO-JFK leg, and on the JFK-LHR leg we can choose between not sitting together or bulkhead. I hate bulkhead seats. I like to have access to my carry on during the first and last half hour of the flight.
The 767 from SFO to JFK is old and a bit shabby. They hand out individual DVD players that you prop on an elevated tray table. After several glasses of champagne, some quite good food, an extravagant amount of hot fudge sauce and a mini bottle of Kahlua poured onto my ice cream dessert, I begin to feel better. Our very charming flight steward tells us at the end of the flight that the reason our seats were changed was that two air marshals were on board the flight without prior notice. They each are required to have an aisle seat, with clear sightlines to the cockpit. OK, we agree that’s an acceptable reason for our seat change.
We land a bit early at JFK which is fortunate as it’s a ten mile hike to Terminal 8 from whence the Heathrow flights depart. I have never in all my trips seen JFK as deserted as it is at 8:30pm on Labor Day Monday. There are only two people ahead of us going through security, and we breeze onto our next flight. (Fashion note: Please remove your inflatable neck pillow before deplaning. Do not wear it around your neck while walking through the terminal. Not even a supermodel can pull off this look.)
Again, the plane is a bit worn. My individual reading light (the flexy one, not the overhead) is as limp as…well, you know. The steward makes a half-hearted attempt to fix it and it breaks off in his hand. The lumbar controls don’t work at all. Not very encouraging. The seats do recline fully flat, but they’re rather uncomfortable. The food is mediocre although my glass of red wine (French) is quite good.
This plane has built-in video players with extremely clumsy and intrusive touch screen controls. I request “Fever Pitch” and the first copy I try has Japanese subtitles that cannot be removed. The second copy is ok. The steward makes us feel worse by telling us that this is one of only three planes left that have not been upgraded with the new, ridiculously deluxe sleeper seats that swivel and have work stations and for all I know, Magic Fingers. Too bad this is the flight on which we’ve chosen to use our 250,000 miles. But wait, it gets worse.
We land at Heathrow, breeze through Immigration in the Priority Lane, pick up our luggage – oops, not quite, because my suitcase is missing. So much for that big red First Class Premium luggage tag. I am on the verge of tears, thinking of my excruciatingly honed wardrobe, my fabulous new jeans, my irreplaceable Japanese scarf, my new shoes, my STUFF. I am not one of those perfect size anythings that can go out and buy a new wardrobe in two hours. Every pair of pants I own has had to be shortened.
The missing luggage does not show up anywhere in the system as having gone astray, so the American Airlines agent thinks it somehow didn’t make it onto our flight when it was transferred at JFK. I think it has been picked up by mistake by some idiot who I can only pray is not on his way to Dubai.
I do my best to reassure myself that it will show up (because otherwise I’m going home, goddamnit) and we catch a bus to the Reading train station to connect to our 1:30 train to Totnes, where we’re visiting our friend, W. But a half hour before our train is due, the electronic board starts to show trains coming from Paddington “delayed.” Then there are announcements that certain trains have been canceled. Nothing seems to be moving in either direction. Eventually we find out someone decided to end it all by leaping in front of a train.
Now, first of all, what a horribly unpleasant way to kill yourself. And next, what a nasty act of aggression: the train engineer has to live with having killed someone for the rest of his life, your family and friends have to live with the mental image of your mutilated body, and you inconvenience thousands of innocent travelers just trying to get about their lives. I urge you, if you must do it, for goodness sake find a more considerate way of offing yourself!
Finally we are advised to catch a different train on another track, and then we are moving at last. As I get up from my seat to use the toilet, a man going a hundred miles an hour plows into me and stomps on my foot so hard it brings tears to my eyes. I should have thanked him actually, because now that I have no clothes to wear, he’s done me the favor of breaking my foot so I don’t have to think about leaving the house.
Two hours later we pull into the Exeter station, but we don’t depart. After some time there is an announcement that due to the schedule disruption, we do not have a driver for the train to continue. At this point we can only laugh, if a bit hysterically, at this fool’s journey. Will we ever get there?
Will W. figure out that we might be on this train? Will he be there to meet us? Will he greet us with “Good news! They’ve found your bag and it will be here tonight!”? Fat chance.
A driver is found; we are on our way again. A calm blue sea appears off the left side of the train. The late afternoon sun turns the shore to rose gold. The hills are green in that impossible English way, and suddenly I receive a visitation from the Goddess of Perspective. We are not starving, we are not being bombed, we are not sitting on a rooftop in New Orleans waiting to be rescued. Life is pretty damn good, even without clean underwear.
To Be Continued…
OK until we top off the tank at the airport for 6 gallons at a whopping $20. When we drop the car and complain that it was not possible for us to have driven that much, we’re given forms to fill out. Looking them over, it seems to indicate the last time the mileage was logged was over 1000 miles ago. Not too surprising since the car had obviously not been cleaned, there was a former renter’s food and trash left there, and presumably the car had not been refueled. Or maybe the manager’s brother-in-law borrowed it for the weekend – who knows? But we certainly didn’t drive 1000 miles in the 21 hours we had the car.
After several years of trying to get mileage award seats on American Airlines, we’ve finally splurged 125,000 miles each on First Class tickets to London, returning from Paris. We check in at the First Class counter: Let the pampering begin! Unfortunately, it begins with the news that our seat assignment has been changed to bulkhead seats on the SFO-JFK leg, and on the JFK-LHR leg we can choose between not sitting together or bulkhead. I hate bulkhead seats. I like to have access to my carry on during the first and last half hour of the flight.
The 767 from SFO to JFK is old and a bit shabby. They hand out individual DVD players that you prop on an elevated tray table. After several glasses of champagne, some quite good food, an extravagant amount of hot fudge sauce and a mini bottle of Kahlua poured onto my ice cream dessert, I begin to feel better. Our very charming flight steward tells us at the end of the flight that the reason our seats were changed was that two air marshals were on board the flight without prior notice. They each are required to have an aisle seat, with clear sightlines to the cockpit. OK, we agree that’s an acceptable reason for our seat change.
We land a bit early at JFK which is fortunate as it’s a ten mile hike to Terminal 8 from whence the Heathrow flights depart. I have never in all my trips seen JFK as deserted as it is at 8:30pm on Labor Day Monday. There are only two people ahead of us going through security, and we breeze onto our next flight. (Fashion note: Please remove your inflatable neck pillow before deplaning. Do not wear it around your neck while walking through the terminal. Not even a supermodel can pull off this look.)
Again, the plane is a bit worn. My individual reading light (the flexy one, not the overhead) is as limp as…well, you know. The steward makes a half-hearted attempt to fix it and it breaks off in his hand. The lumbar controls don’t work at all. Not very encouraging. The seats do recline fully flat, but they’re rather uncomfortable. The food is mediocre although my glass of red wine (French) is quite good.
This plane has built-in video players with extremely clumsy and intrusive touch screen controls. I request “Fever Pitch” and the first copy I try has Japanese subtitles that cannot be removed. The second copy is ok. The steward makes us feel worse by telling us that this is one of only three planes left that have not been upgraded with the new, ridiculously deluxe sleeper seats that swivel and have work stations and for all I know, Magic Fingers. Too bad this is the flight on which we’ve chosen to use our 250,000 miles. But wait, it gets worse.
We land at Heathrow, breeze through Immigration in the Priority Lane, pick up our luggage – oops, not quite, because my suitcase is missing. So much for that big red First Class Premium luggage tag. I am on the verge of tears, thinking of my excruciatingly honed wardrobe, my fabulous new jeans, my irreplaceable Japanese scarf, my new shoes, my STUFF. I am not one of those perfect size anythings that can go out and buy a new wardrobe in two hours. Every pair of pants I own has had to be shortened.
The missing luggage does not show up anywhere in the system as having gone astray, so the American Airlines agent thinks it somehow didn’t make it onto our flight when it was transferred at JFK. I think it has been picked up by mistake by some idiot who I can only pray is not on his way to Dubai.
I do my best to reassure myself that it will show up (because otherwise I’m going home, goddamnit) and we catch a bus to the Reading train station to connect to our 1:30 train to Totnes, where we’re visiting our friend, W. But a half hour before our train is due, the electronic board starts to show trains coming from Paddington “delayed.” Then there are announcements that certain trains have been canceled. Nothing seems to be moving in either direction. Eventually we find out someone decided to end it all by leaping in front of a train.
Now, first of all, what a horribly unpleasant way to kill yourself. And next, what a nasty act of aggression: the train engineer has to live with having killed someone for the rest of his life, your family and friends have to live with the mental image of your mutilated body, and you inconvenience thousands of innocent travelers just trying to get about their lives. I urge you, if you must do it, for goodness sake find a more considerate way of offing yourself!
Finally we are advised to catch a different train on another track, and then we are moving at last. As I get up from my seat to use the toilet, a man going a hundred miles an hour plows into me and stomps on my foot so hard it brings tears to my eyes. I should have thanked him actually, because now that I have no clothes to wear, he’s done me the favor of breaking my foot so I don’t have to think about leaving the house.
Two hours later we pull into the Exeter station, but we don’t depart. After some time there is an announcement that due to the schedule disruption, we do not have a driver for the train to continue. At this point we can only laugh, if a bit hysterically, at this fool’s journey. Will we ever get there?
Will W. figure out that we might be on this train? Will he be there to meet us? Will he greet us with “Good news! They’ve found your bag and it will be here tonight!”? Fat chance.
A driver is found; we are on our way again. A calm blue sea appears off the left side of the train. The late afternoon sun turns the shore to rose gold. The hills are green in that impossible English way, and suddenly I receive a visitation from the Goddess of Perspective. We are not starving, we are not being bombed, we are not sitting on a rooftop in New Orleans waiting to be rescued. Life is pretty damn good, even without clean underwear.
To Be Continued…
Sep 8th, 2005, 09:02 AM
#4
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 34,858
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I sure hope your trip gets better. I hate AA myself, and your experience illustrates why.
On a serious note, I think it was a federal violation for an AA flight attendant to tell you that two air marshals were on board. I would report them, as some people have been prosecuted for "outing" air marshals, even though people can sometimes guess who they are. I'm serious, I would report AA for that -- because either they don't know federal standards, or they were lying to you (which is what I suspect).
On a serious note, I think it was a federal violation for an AA flight attendant to tell you that two air marshals were on board. I would report them, as some people have been prosecuted for "outing" air marshals, even though people can sometimes guess who they are. I'm serious, I would report AA for that -- because either they don't know federal standards, or they were lying to you (which is what I suspect).
Sep 8th, 2005, 09:08 AM
#9
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 268
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Sometimes it takes a visitation from the Goddess of Perspective to calm us down.
I hope to hear from you again soon. You have a way of making me feel as if I were traveling with you. Have a good time.
I hope to hear from you again soon. You have a way of making me feel as if I were traveling with you. Have a good time.
Sep 8th, 2005, 09:17 AM
#12
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 45,322
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Oh Marilyn, I am so sorry for all your troubles but I must confess I am sitting here laughing...I assume that was your intention...to give us a good laugh? What a good sport you are! Now, more please.
Sep 8th, 2005, 09:32 AM
#16
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 1,675
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
The title should have warned me not to open this thread ... But, who could have imagined it would be this bad. A 1000+ words of trials and tribulations, whining and complaining and nothing about visiting England.
And to think a few minutes ago I was looking at the thread about how to write a good trip report.
And to think a few minutes ago I was looking at the thread about how to write a good trip report.
Sep 8th, 2005, 09:36 AM
#17
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 5,107
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Christina, just to clarify, the AA flight attendant did not tell us about the air marshalls until we had landed. Since there were only 8 seats in first class, it was easy to pick them out. I believe they were in first class because that is the section nearest to the cockpit.
Thanks to everyone for all the encouragement. I promise there will be more, but for now, just know that my bag arrived at 3:30pm today so all is right with the world. And now, back to cocktails. Cheers!
Thanks to everyone for all the encouragement. I promise there will be more, but for now, just know that my bag arrived at 3:30pm today so all is right with the world. And now, back to cocktails. Cheers!
Sep 8th, 2005, 09:43 AM
#18
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 5,107
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
PS Ron, dear, I just GOT here for God's sake! What could I possibly write about "visiting England" when all I've done is get to my destination and talk to the airlines about my missing bag? Do you want to know about Costa coffee at the Reading train station?
Be aware that we are not on the tourist trail. We are visiting friends and attending a photo conference. So don't expect me to write about the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace. I WILL be telling you about the local life in wacky wonderful Totnes, and I expect to describe sailing on the river Dart, some famous oyster joint we're going to, Lyme Regis (our next stop) and more. And finally Paris will, I hope, be the icing on the cake.
Be aware that we are not on the tourist trail. We are visiting friends and attending a photo conference. So don't expect me to write about the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace. I WILL be telling you about the local life in wacky wonderful Totnes, and I expect to describe sailing on the river Dart, some famous oyster joint we're going to, Lyme Regis (our next stop) and more. And finally Paris will, I hope, be the icing on the cake.
