Left the house at 2:45am and made our way to Aberdeen. When we got there, the airport was still shut. I slept in the back of the car for about half an hour. When I woke up, my mum said she’d seen a couple people go in – so we did too.
Inside, there was a woman standing, telling us that they weren’t really open and to go take a seat. They then announced that the check-in desks were open, so we headed over, but none of the desks were for British Airways.
While standing, waiting, hoping that a British Airways desk would open, someone came over to us, and asked if we were flying B.A. and that if we were using E-Tickets (I was). She then took us over to the machine and attempted to guide me through the process, but it didn’t work properly, so while checking our luggage, she printed out the boarding pass that hadn’t printed.
My mum and I then went for a drink in the café, before going out to the smoking area, which wasn’t really a smoking area. I then headed to the security area, said my goodbyes to my mum, and went through to the other side.
I put my bag on the x-ray thing and walked through the big metal detector. Although nothing beeped, the guard on the other side asked if he could search me, saying it was just a random check. I then stood for a few moments with my arms outstretched, and legs apart, while he patted me down before heading through to the departure lounge and waiting.
The plane down to Heathrow wasn’t too bad. I got really bad aches though, I would of said earache (‘cause it was to do with the whole pressure thing), but it wasn’t just my ears, it spread throughout my neck, shoulders and head. It wasn’t nice.
When I got to Heathrow, I walked the miles of corridor, before sitting down in a big expansive room, filled with check in desks, and phoned my mum. To tell her where I was, and how things were going. I then headed downstairs, and found a map. The map told me where the Burger King was and I went and ordered some food. I text a heap of people from there before realizing the time and grabbing my bag and leaving. Heading for the map again. The map said that the gate was 15 minutes away and as far as I was aware I didn’t have 15 mins to spare!
I eventually got there, after a lot of fast paced walking, and squeaking of shoes. They weren’t boarding though, so I went to the shop and bought some mints. At the gate, there was a guy and a woman, the guy was checking the passports, the woman was checking the boarding tickets. They both ended up looking at my passport, commenting on how they’d never seen one of the new ones before – The new ones being the Bio-Metric ones. I was kinda shocked, considering the amount of people that travel through Heathrow everyday, and they’d never seen one?
The Plane wasn’t too bad on the way over, I slept for a bit and ended up watching some Father Ted and Friends. The screens also had a map function which showed where the plane was at any given time. So that was pretty cool. Everyone from Aberdeen, right through to LAX was really nice, and friendly, they gave off a happy to help kind of vibe.
That’s where the vibe ended though.
We left the plane after 11 hours on board, and headed down the corridor to the customs section. We were told that our baggage would be on carousel 5 – fair enough – I was then pushed into a queue, where I waited for a good 20 minutes before a woman called me over.
Is this the first time to the U.S?, she asked.
Yes. I replied.
No, I know it is. You filled in this form wrong.
Now wrong implies that I’d done something so drastically wrong that I;d have to get a new form and start over. However, that was not the case. I hadn’t put my name in a couple places, which, if I hadn’t put my name on the form at all, I might understand the need to send me away, but because it was already on the form, and I could have filled it in there and then in a couple seconds, I felt it was kind of stupid to make me wait all over again. Which is what I had to do.
I filled it in and headed to the back of the queue, where some woman came over, muttered something about China and moved me to another queue, which said it was for U.S Citizens – just in case its not clear, I’m a U.K citizen, not U.S – it all worked out, and I headed to the carousel, that’s when my first problem occurred, I couldn’t find my bag anywhere.
Panic set in.
You see, where I’d first queued, my carousel was right in front of me, after all the switching and stuff, I’d forgotten that the carousel wasn’t in front of me any more, so I walked all the way back to Carousel 5, and sure enough, my bag was there. I re-checked it. In the line it said to remove padlocks as they will be broken if they decide to look through your luggage. I didn’t remove mine, but I did unlock it.
All the guards, etc. at LAX seem to love shouting. Its all DO THIS. DO THAT.
After re-checking my bag, I headed over to Airport Information. The woman there was really nice, the first really nice American I’d met. She gave my the directions to the terminal I needed to get to, I’d decided just to walk it. Before I left, she warned my not to give money to anyone out there, “they’re not fundraising” – when she said that, I presumed she meant homeless people. That maybe they were going with the logic that if they didn’t get any money, they’d go elsewhere, in search for some. Kind of like the whole stray cat/food thing.
As soon as I stepped out of the doors, into sunny L.A, a guy came up to me and told me the same directions Id just been given by the woman inside, then said that he was from somewhere and would I like to make a donation. I said I had no dollars.
Oh, we accept all currencies, sir.
Nah, sorry I only have a credit card. – which was of course, a lie
However, even if I had felt the need to give him money, I only had $50s and £20s – which still amounts to about $35. He accepted the excuse, shook my hand, and I headed to Terminal 7.
I got there and sailed through the E-Ticket stuff (Thanks to the woman at Aberdeen). I had to take my shoes off at security and put them through the X-Ray machine, before walking through the metal detector. Everything there went OK, and I headed upstairs to my gate.
I decided that I needed a drink, then realised that all I had was $50s. So I went to the ATM and got $20 out, and went to the shop. I bought some Cancer Water (Cancer Water being Dasani – the stuff taken off the market in the UK, for having cancer causing chemicals – that and the fact that it was just tap water. T’was all they had though. I bought a bar of Herseys too. I then went back and sat down at the gate.
I sat the bottle of Cancer Water down on the chair, it began to roll, I didn’t know this because I’d seen it do so. I knew it because I looked up from my chair to see the woman across from me smile, and then almost chuckle, before pointing at my bottle.
I liked her.
The plane began boarding, and I went and found my seat. The woman behind me, Sharon French (like the language – as she exclaimed down the phone to whoever she was speaking to), kept using her phone, even after the flight attendant had said her piece about mobiles. Just as we were taxi-ing to the runway, I heard from behind me,
“Um, Ma’am, do you still have your cell on?”
Sharon then turned off the phone she had in her hand.
“Thank you.” Then a few minutes later, “That one too, ma’am”.
It made me smile at how dumb she was.
When I got off the plane at Phoenix, we had to walk across the tarmac to the terminal building. The heat was so intense, that I automatically thought I was walking in the draft from one of the jet engines but yeah, it was just the desert heat.
I made my way into the terminal, following all the signs for baggage claim. I was still looking around, getting kinda lost, ’cause I couldn’t see where the claim would be. I looked up and I saw Kara, Kristin and JJ standing there with a sign saying “Smith”.
It was nice to see people I knew, finally. I gave Kara a hug, then Kristin said Hey and we hugged. Then JJ introduced himself, extending his hand to shake, but I hugged him too.
Kara and I headed for baggage claim, standing there looking at all the bags go by, she made a comment about Chicago.. When I said I hadn’t been to Chicago, she told me we were standing at the wrong carousel.
We got my bag, and headed for the car. JJ drove home, just outside Phoenix we entered a massive dust storm, which I later found out was about 1000km across. We stopped for Gas – I didn’t bother correcting them. Then headed back to Tucson. (which, from Phoenix is probably the same distance from Aberdeen to Elgin, maybe just a bit more, except instead of all the big green fields, hills, forests, you have desert and the odd cactus.)
When we got to Tucson, there was a lightning storm, although for the most part, it was just flashes, as opposed to fork lightning.
We got to the apartment and I went almost straight to bed. Where I slept for about 13 hours.