Later today I fly out to Seattle for a couple of days.

I get the first train from Barking (at 5:27, and given that I slept through 3 alarms yesterday, I won’t be sleeping tonight) to Victoria where I get the Gatwick Express to the airport.  At 09:30 I fly out to Houston, landing 10 hours later at 13:30 local time.  One hour later I catch a connecting flight to Seattle lasting four and a half hours, landing at Seattle airport at 17:08 local time.

All this depends on the plane not crashing into the Atlantic (not that I’m a nervous flyer, but I suspect that there will be some calming alcohol therapy beforehand).

I leave Seattle on the 5th of May at 11:40 local time, landing back at Gatwick on the 6th of May at 9:55.

I get to miss the election, which is a happy side effect of this trip.  So who knows what the state of the country will be when I return…

During the trip I shall be in the tender care of Jeannie Cool from IRC, and I’ll be meeting up with some different folks, and at least one ex-pat.

I shall have my mobile phone with me (0790 325 7650), and will hopefully be checking my email every so often (even if I have to become Starbucks best customer), so if you are in Seattle and are at a loose end, feel free to get in contact with me, so I can buy you a drink.

I asked for places to go  and things to do – and I’ll be trying to fit in as many of them as I can.

So for the next few days you will have to put up with me talking about museums, galleries, theatres and (more likely) the floor of many, many Seattle bars.

This, of course, is assuming those wacky Americans let me into the country in the first place.