Travel Day

Right now I’m kind of jet lagged and so I’m probably not 100% capable of forming cognizant sentences, but I’m excited that I’m finally here. Especially since getting here took about 21 hours of travel (at least I think so; with the time differences it’s beyond my feeble arithmetical skills). After we got off the first plane in Detroit, Rose and I were thinking that this trip wasn’t going to be so bad. Then came the three hour layover. There’s really only so much entertainment that perusing the duty free shop can provide, especially since I wasn’t interested in discounted luxury cosmetics or giant boxes of cigarettes. I have no idea who buys those; they’re about the size of one of the really, really big boxes of cereal you get at Costco and cost $100. Having declined to purchase what must undoubtedly be several years supply of smokes, I enjoyed a final piece of Americana in the form of a Burger King combo meal (the American-ness of which is kind of an exaggeration, seeing as there’s one down the street from where I’m sitting right now. As well as the oldest looking McDonald's I've yet seen, pictured above) and then just rode Northwestern’s big red tram (also pictured above)around for about an hour. Needless to say, we were grateful when the time came to get on the plane to London.

My seat was towards the back of the plane, meaning it was a little noisier but not nearly as crowded, which is more than a fair trade in my opinion. The other people around me all seemed to be on some kind of organized group trip. They were all at least 60 years old and in couples. The best part was right after we reached cruising altitude. Before the regular in-flight entertainment began, we were treated to “Air-obics”, a video segment in which a team of veteran NWA flight attendants demonstrated quasi-yoga techniques to prevent deep vein thrombosis or some similarly sinister sounding malady caused by sitting in a chair for seven hours. As the video soothing urged us to “focus on our breathing, drawing energy into your chest as you rotate your head”, seventy little gray heads sitting in front of me revolved in perfect unison (Rose tells me that, regrettably, no one sitting in her part of the plane participated in “Air-obics”). Having taken the proper steps to avoid catastrophic circulatory failures, I proceeded to watch half of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull then rather unsuccessfully tried to sleep.

Heathrow airport is everything it’s cracked up to be. That is, it's crowded, lightless, and curiously lacking in seating and trashcans. We cleared customs and got our bags with no troubles other than some long lines (they even stamped my passport like I hoped). The plan was to land at 7 then meet up with the group flight around 11 and take the bus they had chartered to Oxford. Since we had no way of getting in contact with anyone on the flight, the plan was contingent on catching up with them as they exited the baggage claim area. After standing for 45 minutes after the flight landed without seeing anyone besides lots of tired tourists and a seemingly inexhaustible number of British Airways employees wearing fluorescent yellow vests, I was beginning to worry. Fortunately, people I recognized slowly began to drift through and we linked up with the other group with no problem. The charter bus we took was a little weird, with a bathroom in the middle of the bus, along with a second stairway and door. As the driver drolly suggested, we should be careful which door we opened on the way to the bathroom as we would find the seat behind the rightmost door “rather hard”, in that it would be asphalt moving by at 60mph. It was a fairly short trip to Oxford. The house is awesome, but I’ll probably post about that later. I dropped off my bags in my room, and took a llonger than expected walk downtown. This is a pretty incredible place, which I will also describe at length later. As for now, I have a house meeting to go to.