Excruciating Detail
Blogs, I mean. With rare exception, your typical blog is some whiny high school punk misspelling "their," a ranting armchair politician (also misspelling "their"), or a pop-culturist pining for "Full House." I mean, not everyone's life or opinion is compelling enough to deserve serialization on the Internet.
Which, y'know, probably isn't the best thing to say on the eve of serializing my own life on the Internet, but... whatever. Call it ironic and we're square. Let's get on with it.
This first entry covers quite a bit: everything from LAX to Calgary to London.
6/22/06, 6:36 pm, LAX, Terminal 21
After all the rushing around I've been doing for the past few weeks (longer than that, really), every little accomplishment feels like a major arrival point. It's like spending weeks waiting for a G major 7 chord to resolve to C major, and then suddenly one day you get a false cadence to A minor. It's not the thing you were anticipating, but it's not far from it, and it feels significant-- not to mention that after all that time listening to a G major 7, you start to lose sight of what “resolution” really means. When I was able to walk out of my apartment knowing I had everything packed, I had one of those moments. Then when I finally made it to my parents' house in Calabasas, the last stop before the airport, that was huge. I had some time to relax and catch my breath. Now, here at Terminal 21, it feels like I'm almost there, even though from here I have a three-hour flight, 20 hours of killing time in Calgary, and then however long it takes to get from Calgary to Heathrow. And even then, there's a ton more: getting to my hostel, getting from there to Brighton the next day, checking into my housing, finding my way around campus, getting my books.... To paraphrase Vince Noir, “There's a lot to think about with travel.”
No wireless Net access here (somehow), but maybe I'll have better luck in Calgary. If I have as much luck there as I have time, I'll leave in a solid-gold airplane held aloft by magical fairies made of candy. Also, I will own the airplane.
6/22/06, 11:54 pm, Calgary Airport (YYC)
They flew us here in a tiny airplane, a CRJ 705 Regional Jet, aka the “Bombardier.” I don't know why they'd give a passenger airplane a moniker like that, but the good news is we didn't bomb anyone on the way here. Or maybe we did; I slept through most of the flight. I was awake long enough, however, to notice how new our Bombardier seemed. On the back of every seat was an adjustable LCD screen and a USB port. I have no idea what the latter is for, and maybe they don't either, but it's good to know they're thinking ahead. One of these days we'll break the airplane seat/USB port barrier.
We landed at about 11:15 pm, but the sky wasn't completely dark: The horizon was stuck on dusk. Pretty amazing. Y'know what else is pretty amazing? This airport. Yeah, I'll say that. It reminds me of YVR in Vancouver. Very new, very clean, lots to look at. Currently, I'm face-to-faces with a bunch of creepy mannequins (redundant) dressed in a variety of period clothing and posing in the middle of a baggage carousel. There's a trapper, a cowboy, a British soldier, a guy with a bowler hat, a kid with a backpack who I think is supposed to represent me, and so on. Presumably, I need them to distract me while I wait for my bag to show up, but I think at the very least they ought to be animatronic. Move around a little, sing “Small World,” something. What is this, 1932?
Speaking of baggage claim, I had to go through customs and claim my baggage upon arrival, which means my plan of never seeing this duffel bag until Heathrow has fallen apart. It also means that I'm a little more on my own tonight than I'd expected. The dream of spending the next 20 hours in an airport has died, I think. There's a hotel across the street. If it's not horribly expensive, I'll check in.
This is my last chance for my money to be worth something before hitting the UK. Maybe I should take advantage of it.
Oh, and as it turns out, there is wifi here in the airport, but you have to pay for it and right now I can't even do that, I guess, because the whole thing seems to be down. Grr. There is, however, a nice interactive map of the airport at http://www.calgaryairport.com/. I type this near Meeting Place D.
6/23/06, 1:00 am
No go on the hotel. Their cheapest room was $229 Canadian, and even though that's only about $80 US, it's still not worth it for less than 20 hours. All right, it's more than $80 US, but just as this is my last chance for my money to be worth something, it's also my last chance to make currency exchange jokes that aren't self-deprecating. Currency exchange jokes! The very best kind. The guy offered to give me 20% off (that's equivalent to 35% off in the US), but even with that we both agreed it wouldn't have been worth it. Too bad. It was nifty in there. They have an indoor pool next to the restaurant (I assume they make you wait half an hour for your bill in case you're thinking about swimming after your meal).
So it's a row of airport seats for me tonight. It would've been nice to have been able to relax in comfort, have a bath, etc., but no, one should have to suffer much longer.* But it looks like Tim Horton's is open all night, so it's not all doom and gloom.
Try as I might, it doesn't look like I'll be getting online to post this anytime soon. You have to register with and pay Telus (the AT&T of western Canada) to use the wifi here, which is something I'd grudgingly do if they weren't so unwilling to work with my bank. The odd thing, though, is that the username “devlin1” was already taken by someone named Susan who, it would seem, has the exact same password I commonly use. Bizarre, no? So I tried “devlin” and that same password out of curiosity. “Welcome Brian,” said Telus. What are the odds that two people would've used the password as I? I tried “devlin” with a password of “ssssssss” and got an “invalid credentials” message, so it's not like it'll just take any password. I find the whole thing to be rather strange.
Canadian money, by the way, has gone off the deep end. The twenty looks like a backstage pass to a rock concert (if Queen Elizabeth II's band was still touring), and the new quarters have the AIDS ribbon symbol inset into the back-- in full color! What's next, selling ad space on coins? “Spend me on a Coke!” Actually, that's not a bad idea. I'm writing that one down.
Incidentally, the other crazy thing about Canadian money is how much it's worth. The current exchange rate is 1:1.05! One American dollar will only get you $1.05 Canadian. An extra nickel! That's it! And after their three-dollar surcharge, unless you're changing around $100 US, you end up losing money. Looks like those currency exchange jokes (e.g., “How many Canadian dollars does it take to screw in an American light bulb? 1.46!”) are a thing of the past. Ah well. It couldn't last forever.
This place is surprisingly crowded for 1:15 in the morning. Must be all the mannequins.
*Anyone who gets this reference wins roughly one million points. The only person I know who has even the slightest chance of getting it is my aunt Debbi.
6/23/06, 1:36 pm
You know, boss, sleeping on these airport seats ain't bad. For a while there, I couldn't relax; as usual, I had too much on my mind. So I got up and arranged some music for Scripps, and then I was able to sleep... at around 7:00 am. But it's OK – I didn't wake up until about half an hour ago, and thanks to my improvised but intricate security system of interlaced luggage straps, I still have all my stuff. I slept behind the Foreign Exchange Van, which looks like a cross between an ice cream truck and the Popemobile. It's funny to watch Americans walk up, ask to exchange money, and then decide against it once they realize they won't make a profit.
“Then I shouldn't exchange it at all. I'll just use American money. Right?”
“Some places don't take American money, sir.”
“Oh. Well, thanks anyway.” And then they walk away, ready to take their chances and baffled that anyone in the world wouldn't accept U.S. dollars as manna from Heaven.
Electrical outlets are oddly hard to come by here, but I managed to find one at a Jugo Juice, where I did my work. Apparently they sell smoothies and the like. But “Jugo Juice”? Come on. That's like opening a burger place called McRonald's. If Jamba Juice ever finds out about that place, there'll be hell to pay. Fruity hell.
Only four hours to go until I can check in for my flight. In the meantime, I think there are some Timbits with my name on them.
6/23/06, 4:17 pm
I tried for some time to find a quiet bathroom where I could perform my afternoon ablutions, but the airport's just too busy now for that kind of privacy. I did find one, though, where a guy was washing his shoes in the sink, and I figured next to him my own thing wouldn't look unusual. So I managed to wash my hair and face, change into some clean underwear (in a stall – I'm not weird), and slap on a fresh coat of deodorant. Amazing what a difference all that makes. Still have miles to go before I sleep.
I don't board for another two and a half hours. I'm excited at the prospect of being able to leave my shoes on throughout the security check. I don't know if that's part of the process here too, but it seems somehow un-Canadian to make me take off my shoes. If anything, I expect a friendly “Would it be all right if I asked you to take off your shoes? If you don't want to, that's fine, too. Thanks!”
The Canada Customs people were nice enough last night. Talkative, even. I don't know if the second woman (there was a second woman) were quizzing me to check out my story or genuinely interested in my travel plans, but she sold it well. Of course, I've cleverly disguised myself as a Canadian to fit in and gain the trust of these strange, gentle people, so that may explain it.
In retrospect, I'm glad I had to pick up my bag at baggage claim after my first flight, even though it's meant lugging the thing around everywhere in a cart. The odds of Air Canada losing it sometime in the 20-hour interval between flights is probably pretty high. Higher than the odds of me losing it, anyway. There's something remarkable about transporting my bags from Orange County to Brighton, but I'm not sure what it is. It could be that I've spent the last 17 hours in an airport and everything's way more interesting than it should be.
Speaking of which, if you're of the opinion that I've written way too much about the past 18 hours (it's an hour later now), you're probably right. However, keep in mind that I've really had very little else to do but write about what it's like here. Once I'm in London, and especially when I'm in Brighton, there'll be other things to occupy my time besides... um... blogging. God, I hate that word, but I guess that's what I'm doing.
6/24/06, 8:15, International Student House, London
The short version is I made it here. The longer version would probably sound like a lot of whining and make me look brutally incompetent, so let's just say I made it here and look back with greebert on the flight itself.
Good food. I had a ton of food already, thanks to my mom; she had 
loaded me down not just with snacks for the trip, but with home-made baked goods intended to last at least two weeks. In fact, I couldn't fit it all in my carry-on, and at every opportunity I've been eating what I have just to make room for more efficient packing.
Air Canada had some good food of its own, though, which is what they ought to have for a trans-Atlantic flight. Dinner and breakfast. I'd been saving the bottle of water that came with our dinner until I discovered that it'd somehow leaked three-quarters of itself all over my backpack and my feet. You know that feeling when you think “Hey, there's absolutely no reason in this situation why my feet should feel wet”? I had that. Luckily, it'd only soaked the back of my backpack and the straps (my plastic accordion folder had miraculously provided a breakwater), but even that was pretty irritating: I did have the wear the thing, after all.
Customs was a madhouse. We landed at about 11:15 am, which was apparently when all international flights were landing, because the winding customs line was filled to capacity. I remember the last time I was here I couldn't even understand my customs officer, which was awkward, but there were no problems of that nature this time. There was, however, the mother and daughter in front of me. The latter easily had (and still does, I presume) one of the most annoying voices in the world, the nuances of which are impossible to duplicate in writing. Well, OK. Imagine a sixth-grade female Gilbert Gottfried. That's not far off.
Getting my bag was the usual hassle, but whatever. When I got on the Underground, I learned that all stops on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines between Baker Street and Liverpool were closed. This is significant. The main reason I chose this particular hostel was because it's right next to the Great Portland Street station which, as you've probably guessed, lies between those two stations on those two lines. I got off at Baker, tried to walk, got instantly lost, eagerly asked someone for help (twice), and eventually got here.
This place is great. My little four-bed room, I mean. I'm just happy to be somewhere quasi-permanent, with furniture designed to accommodate me overnight. I was so beat by the time I got here that I couldn't even shower right away: I washed the sweat from my face in the in-room sink and had a little lie-down. Then, for some reason, I watched “Lookwell!” I just didn't have the energy to leave the room, even to shower. In time, of course, I got to all of that – I walked down to Oxford Street and back, too – but the journey to this point has really taken a lot out of me. Hopefully I can access the hostel's wifi and post this, then I'm getting something to eat.
Oh, and I think I should mention that I dress like an idiot here. What I mean is this: London is fashion-conscious city, and I'm dressed like I'm in Costa Mesa. And I'm not even fashionable in Costa Mesa! Don't worry, the hockey jersey's off, but the shorts-and-T-shirt combo that serves me so well in provincial Southern California is, from what I've seen on the street, not exactly standard dress. That's not to say I'm going to change, mind you. I just thought you should know.
P.S.: I did not leave Calgary in a magical fairy-powered gold airplane.
