Monday, 15 May 2006

Over to Heathrow and over to Boston (Massachusetts, USA)

(Over is the village in Cambridgeshire where I grew up and where my parents still live.)

The day started early with a 5 am departure to drive to the airport. Sunrise is officially at 5:09 am but its light for about an hour before that. I know that because I couldn’t sleep once I’d woken up at 2:40 am. I hate the days leading up to a departure; all the planning, packing, double-checking and fretting. I don’t often get stressed, but this is one occasion when I do. Once I’ve checked in my luggage at the airport I can relax.

The packing is especially tricky when travelling with a bicycle and lots of camping equipment. Being limited to two pieces of check-in luggage means that lots of extra items have to go in the bike box around the bike, like the panniers, although one rear pannier I can carry as hand-luggage. Everything else has to go into the rucksack, which is a heavy item to cycle with but useful for the flight and the occasional walking trip. In the past I’ve had to open and re-pack a bike box at the airport when it’s been too heavy (more than 32 kg!) so this time I tried to limit the weight by packing some of the heavy items (like pedals, bike lock and tools) in the rucksack. I had no way of weighing the bike box until I got to the airport.

My (ex-)brother-in-law Chris was good enough to get up early to drive me to the airport. The roads were quiet at that time of the morning, but by no means empty. There were no jams until the Heathrow exit from the M4; from there it was a start/stop 15 minute crawl all the way to terminal 3 for an overall journey time of 2 hours. England was looking very green, with the white hawthorn and fields of oilseed rape still in full bloom. I wonder how long it will be before I see her hedgerows and fields again.

Check-in was the quickest and easiest I've ever known. The bike box, at nearly 5 feet long was too long to fit through the maze of cordons snaking up to the check-in desks so they directed me around the side and straight up to a free check-in desk. They didn't bother to weigh the bike box (which is lucky as it was over 26kg, which is slightly above the free luggage limit, at 23 kg.) They also didn’t complain about the tent strapped to the bottom of the rucksack which I thought they might.

Having checked in so quickly I bought a Guardian and went off in search of breakfast (a poor quality ‘Full English’ as you might expect at an airport) as I had plenty of time before the flight at 10:55. Internet was a rip-off at £6/hour – I’m sure more people would use it if it was reasonably priced.

Having had little sleep last night, staying awake until boarding time was a bit of an ordeal, but at least it meant that I slept through a good part of the flight. For me, those little fold-out wings on the headrest that stop your head lolling around while you snooze are far better than any in-flight ‘entertainment’. With 2 hours flying time left, the flight display indicated that we were flying over St. John’s in Newfoundland – approximately 950 miles from Boston as the crows flies; I wondered if I would make it as far as St. John’s and if so, how long it would take me. Even at 50 miles per day, it would take nearly 3 weeks, and of course, I’m sure the distance will be much more than 1000 miles by road.

According to the Guardian, “cake” is slang in the US for the female genitalia; something I hadn’t heard of before. I must make a mental note to be careful when saying something is a ‘piece of cake’ or ‘to have your cake and eat it’!
Boston was cold, grey when I arrived, 10 C, misty and raining. But it was worse than that. As I queued up in immigration the radio was playing and I was listening to the news… It had been raining for 5 days, and with impeccable timing, I'd arrived in Boston during the worst flooding for 70 years. (Since the big flood of '36) A state of emergency had just been declared in Massachusetts...! Oh good. The floods were expected to peak in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Luckily I’m not planning to go anywhere tomorrow, except by train into Boston.

It took quite a long while to clear immigration, so my luggage was already waiting by the time I'd got through. Then it was just a short $45 taxi ride in an oversized taxi van to my hotel, the Presidents City Inn in Quincy. The start of a journey can be pretty inspiring, but I haven’t really started travelling yet, and I was feeling pretty low; alone in a hotel room with the prospect of being alone for months to come. The weather was crap and my plans in possibly disarray before I’d even started, and I was struggling to get the bike back together properly with my minimal tools. To make matters worse I was feeling a bit flu-y; I can’t remember the last time I was ill – certainly not for a long time. I’d spent much of Sunday “entertaining” my 5 year old niece and I think I’d caught her cold.

I went out a bit later, and immediately felt better for being out and about. I bought some fruit and supplies at a Chinese supermarket and went to a Murphy’s Bar for something to eat and drink; 8 oz baked Scrod (spicy cod?) and mash – huge obviously, for $10.99and a couple of medicinal Guinness. The only good news so far seems to be the £/$ exchange rate which at nearly $2 to the £ makes it a good time to visit the US.