The Hawker Squawker

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I’ve finally gotten over the jet lag and caught up on things at home, so i’ve got a spare moment to blog about our final day in the UK. We got up around 5:30am local time and headed back towards London. We decided not to risk getting lost or missing our plane by stopping at Stonehenge along the way, so instead we visited Windsor Castle. We got there a bit early, so we wandered around town a bit and took some pictures of old knights tombs.

Once the tour opened, we only had about an hour. That’s just not enough time to check out Windsor. The place is HUGE. And opulent. Opulent doesn’t even begin to describe the interior of this place. It’s insane. And it’s pretty cool that the place has been constantly lived in for over 900 years. You can see where additions and changes have been made over the years.

After a quick trip through the castle we skipped out, got to the airport with only one wrong turn (and one loud honk around one of those @$()$*& roundabouts). The flight was … long. Very very long. Oh so long. And here i am Glad to be back in the good old USA where i can drive on the right side of the road and eat big juicy hamburgers.

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I hate my TV alarm clock!. Enough said. We were hoping to get done with work early today so that we could pop over to the Doctor Who Up Close Exhibition before it closed at 6:30, but no suck luck. I guess it will have to wait for another trip. It’s 6:30 now and i’m still at the office. We won’t have time tomorrow, and after that we’re heading out of town.

I did get to have lunch at an authentic pub of a local small town near the office. They said the pub’s been there for about 200 years or so. It had a dark wooden interior, carpeted floor, a dining room and a lounging room, complete with an old guy sitting in an oversized stuffed chair smoking a pipe. (I would have taken an interior picture, but i wasn’t sure if that would be frowned on, so i passed). Jayne ordered faggots. Which, it turns out, are meatballs. Sort of. Mostly they are only meatballs “in the strictest sense of the word: heart, liver, eye, stomach, testicles, things like that”. I passed on the faggots and went for the steak.

The remainder of the day was fairly uneventful. We finished up work, got back to the hotel without getting lost. Well, that’s not true. We followed the directions and the GPS led us into a dead-end street. It had just been torn up and a new building put there, so this time it wasn’t our fault! After getting back, we went out for a very delicious dinner at an Italian place by the bay and came home. I’ve got another meeting that starts at 11pm local time, so i’ll see you all tomorrow.

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When we got back to the car rental, they had a GPS unit that had been returned. I snagged it. I wasn’t about to drive anywhere without one (and in hindsight, it’s been invaluable during the trip!). Off we went for Cardiff – the capital of Wales. It only about 2 and a half hours to get there, but it felt a lot longer. I hadn’t slept for 24 hours and it was night, and i’m driving on the wrong side of the road. One advantage though: not a lot of traffic. Thanks to the GPS we found the hotel without any difficulty and checked in. Then we went down to the bay, grabbed some food, and headed back to the hotel to crash for a few hours.

Let me tell you about the alarm clock in the hotel. I asked for a wake-up call. No luck, but “there’s an option on your telly”. Menu, option 3 (don’t miss and hit option 4 or else you’ll be into the adult entertainment section) . I set it for 7:30 and decided to hop online so i could leave a message for my wife, who was worried sick since she hadn’t heard anything from me. (Well, i like to think she was worried anyway). But wait – our hotel has wi-fi, but it’s extra. 60 pounds ($100) extra! Lame. But I need internet and the company is paying, so whatever. A quick “hey, i’m alive, see you tomorrow” email, and off to bed. 7:30 came all too early. The TV came on LOUD. I pressed the power button, and the TV came on LOUD. I pressed cancel, and the TV came on LOUD. I turned down the volume, and the volume went back LOUD. CRAP. Finally i just unplugged the thing. Hopefully i’ll figure it out tomorrow.

We grabbed some breakfast at the hotel and hopped into the car. I followed the GPS and we headed for the highway. Cardiff isn’t as busy as London, but it WAS rush-hour and we were driving in the middle of downtown. My blood-pressure rose a few points, i can tell you. But it got much worse once we took the wrong exit half-way down the highway and i was driving down roads that were barely wide enough for 2 cars normally, and everyone around here parks in the street on both sides. You have to crawl along and hope nobody is coming the other way. The GPS kept routing us around the city, i kept taking wrong turns because of all the squirreley roundabouts. Finally about 30 minutes and two heart attacks later, we made it back to the highway and eventually found the office.

Everyone here is nice. Work was … work. Nothing exciting. Meetings, email, bug fixes, remote meetings over Skype. Blah blah. At lunchtime, Dai (the local liaison and Bruce’s counterpart on this side of the pond) took us out to lunch. Turns out he’s into miniature painting and castles. Score. After lunch he took us to a local castle. It’s what they call a ‘folly’. We’d call it a replica. It was an old Roman ruin that was restored (with some artistic license) in the early 1800′s. Although not some ancient original castle, it was cool to see and wander around. Just a taste of things to come i hope

Back to work, back to the hotel, grabbed some dinner by the bay. While we were there, i spotted the entrance to Torchwood! It was too dark for pictures though. Hopefully tomorrow…

I was all packed and ready the night before. The only snag occurred when i tried to locate the flip HD video camera. No luck. It was nowhere to be found. Sad, but not catastrophic. I left some extra space in my suitcase, knowing i’d need it for some souvenirs. The day before a package had arrived for Luann with a bunch of bubble-wrap packaging. I put it in there to fill the space, and had a heck of a time convincing Andrea that it was in her best interests to leave it alone She kept wanting to pop all the bubbles.

Finally got to the office and met up with Bruce and Ben. We carpooled up to the airport and picked up our tickets. It was the first time i got to use my shiny new passport. Getting through security was fairly painless. Unlike the last time i traveled, i guess i didn’t get flagged, and consequently didn’t get the terrorist treatment this time. Total time to get through security: 3 minutes.

The flight to Dallas was nice. Plane took off on time. I was sitting between two other people, but they were both very quiet the whole ride, so i just got to relax and read my book. One cool thing was the cloud cover. It was early evening as we were nearing the airport in Dallas and the sky above was pure blue and the sky below was pure white as far as i could see in every direction. As we descended you could see more and more detail in the clouds. It was a very cool perspective. Going from solid white with no details to big puffy clouds with lots of depth, to being immersed in a white cloud, to finally being underneath in the gloom. Right before we entered the cloud cover, there was a big rainbow. Except it was a rain-circle, with the plane’s shadow in the center. Wish i’d had my camera out for that one.

Dallas was relaxing. Just sat around, charged up the laptops, grabbed some food and waited for our plane. Felt bad for one woman who was there with two little kids (probably both around 3 years old) who were crying and screaming. I felt bad, but not bad enough to hope she was on the opposite end of the plane from me. It turned out well though. A few minutes into the flight they were out and slept the whole time.

Talk about a long flight! Wow. Nine hours in a plane seat. Not the most fun i’ve ever had. Fortunately i was in a row with three seats and the seat next to me was empty so i had a little elbow room. The flight was a bit of a blur. Got served some bland airplane food a few times. Tried to catch a few catnaps (to varying degrees of success). Listened to the guy behind me snore most of the time. Tried my best to ignore the in-flight movies… And finally we landed.

We picked up luggage and waited in line for about 10 minutes to get through customs. It was pretty painless. Showed my passport, flashed a smile, got my first stamp (on page 17 for some reason; he didn’t even bother to put it on page 1. rude…), and away we went. I think we were supposed to stop at the next station so they could search our luggage or something, but we didn’t stop, and they didn’t yell at us, so … i guess all is well. We hopped on a bus and headed to the car rental.