February 7th, 2024
Being winter, in Scotland, snow isn’t necessarily a given, but it’s not to be unexpected either. Forecast for the drive to the airport told us it was coming, so we left a little earlier than we might have otherwise. I had booked the parking to start from 8am and we arrived pretty much bang on – meaning, for the first time, the barrier raised without any issues, the little sign greeting me as I drove in. Off to a great start!
We got ourselves through security and had something to eat, before sitting and waiting for the flight. Other than a slight mishap with scanning our boarding passes, with the screen saying ‘Do Not Board’ (still not sure what happened there, the attendant waived us through), the flight down to Heathrow went without a hitch.
When we landed, we had to scan ourselves through to get to the main part of the terminal, I got through OK, but Connor was directed to a desk – presumably because he was in an exit row/next to the door. I waited for him at the top of the stairs and we wandered around the terminal before going to the Spoons to get some lunch.
From where we were sat, I could see a departures screen. Our flight had been delayed. Not ideal, but fine.
Once we were done eating, we sat down again to wait for our gate to show up. Only for our flight to be delayed again. And again. And again. In total, it was delayed for two hours.
When we eventually arrived at the gate, we were told that the plane we were due to be on had a fault and there had been a delay in getting another one. There was also speculation that the delay had been due to Prince Harry who was supposedly on the same flight (though if he was, we would have been at very different ends of the plane, so I have no idea).
The flight itself was fine. I didn’t sleep at all, occasionally I’d feel myself dropping off and then I’d hypnagogic jerk myself awake again.
When we landed in LAX (the first time I’d been in the airport since the Arizona incident), we made our way to the customs desk. It all felt a lot less hectic than it did the last time I was there. The past few times I’ve been in the US, mostly Florida airports, the customs people have glanced at my passport, maybe scanned my fingerprints and/or taken my picture and sent me on my way.
LAX guy decided to ask my whole life story.
“Why are you here?” – Oh, the theme parks, basically. Going to Disney and Universal.
“OK. Show me your tickets.” – At which point I had to dig through my emails to find the PDFs.
“Where are you staying?” – I told him.
“How much money do you have with you?” – I was honest in that I didn’t have any actual cash with me. But cards.
“How much money do you have on the cards?” – I told him.
I was able to answer all the questions he had, in a seemingly satisfactory way, but while answering, all I was thinking was that if the other guy was asking Connor the same questions, he’d have none of the answers (at least about where we were staying, unable to produce the park tickets, etc). I was finished before Connor, so I kind of hovered, in case he needed me to provide evidence (he didn’t).
We did it. We were officially in the USA. Now to get a 45min car ride to our hotel.
The LAX-It system was actually a lot more straight forward than I thought it would be. We followed the signs to the shuttle stop. Got the shuttle to the LAX-It area and ordered a Lyft from there – it was my first time using Lyft, as opposed to Uber. The basic set up being the same, but for whatever reason, Lyft was significantly cheaper.
I had forgotten how terrifying American roads can be. With the, at times, seemingly endless lanes and massive trucks, but we got to the hotel and didn’t die.
We got the hotel a little later than planned, and mostly just wanted to get to bed. I had thought about venturing to the CVS that was a couple blocks away, but we found a little shop area in reception that had everything we needed for that night and the next morning.