Across the Ocean

We left home early Tuesday evening, with a somewhat chagrined cabdriver who had mistakenly thought we wanted to be picked at at 5:45AM and had called from our driveway that morning. I had woken up when the phone rang, and my first and only thought before I fell back into sleep was "well, at least if something bad happened in England, we'll be there in the morning." Packing that day had involved less running around than usual as the bulk of it had been done the night before since I had to spend half of Tuesday at work training my replacement.

We decided to Fly Zoom because it was quite a bit cheaper than the major airlines. We got to Pearson in plenty of time for the 8:30 boarding call, and Dad spent quite a bit of that time trying to figure out how to get his Swiss Army Knife onto the plane (he had forgotten it was in his camera case from his camping trip the previous weekend). After security caught it the first time we tried to get through to the gate, he tried to disguise it as a tripod (don't ask; I don't get it either), but they caught him and confiscated it. Ironically, my mom lost her knife the same way on our Peru trip. Being the seasoned traveler that I am, I waltzed right through without a problem. Ah well, it's nice to know that those detectors are doing their job, but too bad they couldn't stop the snakes...

AAAAAAAAA
RRRRRRRRR
GGGGGGGGG
HHHHHHHH!
THEY WERE
ON THE
PLANE!
Ahem.

Although we left late (and were regaled with such classics as "She's the Man" and "Ice Age II: The Meltdown") we managed to arrive early (before noon, English time).

This time, it was my dad's turn to waltz through Stanstead security with his British Passport (literally, his line just flashed their passports and got a smile and a wave through), while I stood in the agonizingly slow "Visitors" line. (Mental note: get off butt and get British citizenship already!) While waiting, I also put my hitchhiking towel to good use, mopping up the can of Fruitopia that busted in my bag. By the time I got through customs, Dad had procured our one suitcase and was waiting on the other side.

We emerged into the hot (what the hell was England doing being so hot?) English day just in time to see my uncle drive by in his car so my dad went and stood in the middle of the road to wave him down when he drove 'round again. This is where I remembered that they drive on the wrong side of the road, and being horribly jetlagged, I decided to stick to the sidewalk for the time being.

Hugging my uncle Benny (my dad's in the middle of three brothers; Ben's the oldest) and being enfolded back into my "second home" with a cup of tea was sigh of contentment lovely. I insisted on adopting the room I slept in four years ago, which used to be Gemma's (my cousin who's a few months older than me) room, and pretty much napped all day. Gem came home around 8, tired from a day of teaching, but we hit the pub with the two dads, and formulated ThePlan (TM). This would have been my first taste of European Beer while in Europe, since I didn't like beer the last time I came. More beer to come!

Since I was too tired to take more pictures that day, I'll leave you now with more pictures of SNAKES on the M*F*ing PLANE!