Home.

Didn’t plunge screaming into the Atlantic.

Luggage found.

Tea (blessed, blessed tea…)

Bath.

More tea.

Sleep.

Work Sunday and Monday Night.

More Sleep.

It is good to travel, but it’s also good to get back.

Many thanks to everyone who I interacted with on this trip – they were all excellent.

Normal service has now returned (although I’m still walking funny from all those bloody hills).

Things that are keeping me sane, waiting for a plane.

1) A Dell pocket PC with CF Wifi card.
2) Some power in the battery of the above device.
3) An unsecured Continental Airlines Wifi network.
4) Bloglines working well with the above setup.
5) The thought that I'm not flying back into a Conservative government, although Labour isn't much better.
6) A CD player that is currently playing my .wma backups of Moby's back catalogue.
7) 40oz of smoothie goodness.
8) Planning on how to get 'Don't Panic' engraved on the front of my aluminum Pocket PC case.
9) And, that in 4 hours I'll be in the air, and heading closer to a nice cup of tea.

Found beer and meat.

Drank beer, ate meat.

Beer is not a cup of tea, but it dies dull the pain.

Found WiFi network.

Hacked WiFi network.

Sent email.

Six hours until I'm in the air - Six hours in an airport terminal. It isn't that well stocked with shops either.

Would like more news on the election. Will hit the BBC news site before pocket PC batteries die.

Now I just hope my luggage hasn't been blown up because no-one collected it.

The next time I post I will be sitting at my mum's house, drinking a proper cup of tea.

Assuming I haven't plunged into the Atlantic...

It is hot...really, really hot. And I'm prepared for Seattle to London. I've made a run for the air-conditioning of the airport.

My flight is leaving at 18:45, that is seven and a half hours away.

I have no teabags.

Send help NOW.

I am indeed a plank, a fool, a twit and a muppet.

Well, not particularly – but due to circumstances both within, and without my control I’ve missed my connection.

So I’m stuck in Houston for a while.

The good news is that I’m in a particularly swanky hotel, swankier than any hotel I’ve ever been in before.

The bad news is that it means I’m going to miss some of my work shifts.  I’ve already phoned my brother, and he will contact work for me tomorrow.

I wonder how this absence will be recorded?

The bad news is that my check-in luggage is currently somewhere over the Atlantic.  This has my clothes, my toiletries and all my power leads.

I have no idea when I’ll be back in England.

But to be fair to Continental Air, they are fotting the bill for the whole affair.  So while I’m upset not to be in England when I planned, at least I’m not homeless and wandering the streets.

Tomorrow, I think I’ll work on my suntan, as the weather here is astounding.

More after I get home.

Wish me luck…

Yesterday I did a lot of walking, as I mentioned earlier– I’m a Londoner and am therefore used to flat surfaces.

Seattle is a bunch of hills, and you find yourself going up and down hills to get into town.  Then there is the walk back.  These aren’t little hills either, at some points you want to walk on all fours, or break out the mountaineering equipment.

My legs now hurt, and I’m walking like I’m an eighty year old man.  But at least I don’t need a walking stick (yet) – and the weather was nice, and I had some good music on my CD player.

The reasoning behind all this walking was to see the Music Experience and Science Fiction Museum, the Music experience is good if you like looking at guitars, or you like Jimi Hendrix (perhaps I should let the museum know where they could get their hands on the actual ambulance Hendrix died in…).  The SF museum was much more up my alley, highlights included a globe video display, and, for a sad ‘Aliens’ fan like me, the Power-loader from the final fight in the film.

Later in the evening I met with the East Side Bloggers (Hi Anita and all you other folks), and then went on to see The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy.  I liked the film, the changes were pretty much all in the flavour of the previous incarnations, and while a few of my favourite jokes were dropped it was still very funny and very much in the right spirit..

Today there was even more walking hobbling around as I went shopping in Pike street market, visited the first ever Starbucks, and visited the Seattle underground.

Gary Turner had, by strange coincidence taken the same picture as Dave Winer of the Pike Street Market – so I felt that repeating the photo would be a nice way to put us in the same place, separated only by time.  You can see the other pictures here.

The Seattle Underground was a guided tour, and as a Londoner it takes a lot to impress me about underground stuff.  I love the mysteries of the subterranean world, so I was really looking forward to this tour.

To be fair the actual underground bit was a bit dull, loads of brick walls, and tiny when compared to the stuff that is hidden under London.

But the tour guide was excellent, and worth the price of admission alone.  Plenty of humour, well presented, and one of the best tours I’ve ever been on.

Then it was another walk up and down a load of bloody hills, I think Shin splints are a giggle and a half, and there I was thinking that my days of ‘sport injuries’ are over.

Tommorrow I get to fly back into England via Houston.  It will take about 18 hours, assuming I make my connecting flight (which I doubt, as I’ll almost certainly be dragged to one side for ‘special treatment’ again).  I like travel, but it’s nice to get home.

Then on Saturday night I get back to cruising the streets of Newham, looking for trouble.

Normal service will be resumed.

Yesterday I braved the intricate public transit system of Seattle, where you pay when you leave the bus and where some buses only run three times a day.  I was aided by a lovely lady driver who noticed that I was clueless and helped me out (even if she did demand cookies for it).

All the people I’ve met so far have been very polite, friendly and eager to help a lost looking Englishman.  This is not the impression that I got of Americans from the TV…

So why did I risk life and limb on getting a bus to the outskirts of Seattle?  (The picture might give you a clue…)

I was meeting up with fellow blogger, and ex-pat Steve Lacy.  He was going to show me the Microsoft campus, and then go for some drinks.

The Microsoft campus was pretty much as I expected it – only much, much larger.  Steve shares my love of Microserfs, and it was a real pleasure to see the place where the first part was set.  Unfortunately the museum was being used for a private function, so I didn’t get to see it, but just being in that hallowed place was geek heaven for me.

In an alternate reality I would have continued my computer education, got a job programming and ended up prowling the corridors of Microsoft getting paid obscene amounts of money for writing super-efficient code.  In this reality my skills at 6502 machine code is the zenith of my computing skills.

Steve then took me to meet his wife, child and father-in-law, and they were all wonderful people.  It’s really nice to hear an English accent when you are abroad, and we had some of the largest pizza I’ve ever seen, and we talked about what America is really like.  We agreed that it is much nicer than you would think watching the TV.

The next time Steve or his family are in England, they should let me know so I can buy them dinner or something.  I’d invite them to my home, but their house is so lovely I’d just be embarrassed.

So Steve, his friend Zman and I then went to a genuine tavern.  It was just like the ones you see in the films.  Everyone there seemed to know Steve, and so there were plenty of people to talk to.  The night went on, with much drinking of pints of Stella, conversation that seemed, for some reason, to revolve around foreign bodies I’ve seen up peoples arses.

I have absolutely no idea how I got back to Jeannie’s place.  There was a taxi involved, but because he couldn’t find the address (and didn’t really speak a form of English that I could understand), I told him to just drop me off.

There then followed an indeterminate period of drunkenly wandering around, staring at the picture that I have on my compact digital camera, trying to make sense of the funny way that Americans lay their streets, and how place their street names.  However the god of drunken fools was smiling on me (as he often does) and I managed to make my way safely back through a strange city.

The amusing thing, is today I had real trouble finding the house, while sober, in daylight and with a map.

Perhaps I should have popped into a bar for a few drinks…

Seattle yesterday had truly glorious weather, so Jeannie and I took full advantage of it by getting out early and visiting the Seattle Space Needle for brunch.

Being from London, and therefore genetically evolved to life on the flat, every time we drove up or down one of Seattle's many hills, my ears popped and I couldn’t hear a thing.  So you can imagine just how deaf I was going up and down the Space Needle elevator.

Someone does need to tell the interior designers of the restaurant that the 70’s are over, and brown carpeting and fittings are old hat.

Going to the Space Needle was just one of many first experiences for me.  Others include.

• I ate Shellfish for the first time (Clam Chowder – Very nice)
• I ate Salmon for the first time (That was very nice as well.)
• And, I ate in a revolving restaurant for the first time (Which had a really nice view)

While the floor of the restaurant revolves, the walls don’t, so children write little messages, pop them on the window ledge, and other diners can see what they have written.  Someone should collect and publish them, because there are some little gems there – for instance, the picture to the left, where someone writes hello, and another child (I hope…) asks of they are “Boy?  Girl?  Single?”.

Reminds me of some chat rooms.  I suppose that it is similar here, anonymous messages sent off for everyone to read.

We then went to the observation deck, which as the weather was so nice, had a lovely view of the city.  It also helps that Jeannie is an excellent tour-guide.

We got our picture taken by a French businessman, while Jeannie explained the meaning of some American slang.

We then had a bit of a drive around, we saw the locks, where I got some nice pictures of a train drawbridge.  We also went to Fremont where I visited the ‘Center Of The Universe’, which to me looks a little like a cut price Camden Lock in London.

But the Statue of Lenin was cool, as was the Fremont Troll.

For those that don’t know, the Fremont Troll is a concrete troll under a bridge, that was financed by an arts charity.  It really is excellent, and given the number of bridges in London we could do with something like this ourselves.

The day was rounded off perfectly by drinks and then a new episode of “Family Guy”, and “Shaun Of The Dead”.

Today, I am Jeannie-less as I try to find my way across the city to meet up with an ex-pat.  Should be interesting as I try to navigate the public transit system.  Hopefully I’ll be able to find my way back after dark…

 

I hope you aren’t finding this travelogue too boring, but as my phone won’t make international calls (bloody AT&T), this is a good way of letting my mum and brother know that I’m still breathing.

More tomorrow.

Well, as I said earlier, I landed safely, and was met by Jeannie at the airport 2 minutes after clearing baggage.

It seems that I haven't finished being an interesting target for various security companies - we got a mile down the road before we were stopped by the police. This time however it was nothing to do with me (honest!), but instead Jeannie's car had a headlight blown out.

Today (for it is 21:00 in this part of the world), we have been to a birthday party (in perhaps the most droolworthily gorgeous house I've ever seen), then a wander around Downtown, and in a bit (after we have walked the dog) we'll be heading back into town to go and watch the movie Sin City.

I have also discovered the tastyness of margaritas, the amazing flying fish of Pike Market, and the American equivalent of B&Qs.

Jeannie has also made sure that I haven't been killed by forgetting that foreigners drive on the wrong side of the road, stepping off the kerb while looking the wrong way and ending up dead under the wheels of a lorry.

The weather is quite nice too.