Thursday 25 June 09

It seems only appropriate, since we started this trip - and this blog - with the day that never ended to finish up with one of the longest days any of us will ever have had.

Our Airport Transfer vans are set to pick us up at the hotel at 5AM (even though I had checked in and let them know that we were going to Terminal 4, not Terminal 5). Ah well, if John Wesley could get up at 4AM each day to be ready to preach at a 5AM worship service, then we can probably do it once in order to go home. Of course, some of us had to get up before that, in order to wake the others, but that's mere quibbling, right? Right.

So, at 3:30AM the alarm chirped in my ear and it was up, shower, dress, and get ready to knock on doors. I was surprised at how quickly the doors were answered at 4AM given how much more trouble I usually had at times like 7AM or even 8AM (perhaps it really is time to go home).

Our final packing was completed, so about 4:30 I thought I'd ring the boys' rooms to make sure they really were up and about. Great idea, but no answer in either room, this could be trouble. The whole point of phoning this time was to avoid all the stairs (as I may have mentioned, Heidi and I were in a room down a level from the ground floor, while the boys were on the third floor, or what we would call the fourth floor in the States, as they start with ground, then 1, then 2, etc.). Well, there's nothing for it but to head up all those flights. Wait, what's this? They're all in the lounge off the hotel lobby (except Matt, who was still in the shower when the rest of them came down). Brilliant.

In fact, everyone was down with all their luggage well ahead of 5, so then it was simply down to waiting for our vans. At a few minutes before 5, I took a look out to see if they were there, and to see what the weather was like (probably 10C / 50F and partly cloudy, just fyi), and I saw two VW Transport vans go by on the other side of the road with the drivers looking at addresses on the buildings. Most likely they're ours, so we get ourselves ready, grab all the luggage and head out on the porch. I went all the way down to the street just to be able to flag them down if they weren't coming along the small access road directly in front of the hotel.

They weren't.

In fact, they had the wrong address (89 rather than 86) and had been circling the block for a little while before seeing me and stopping to ask if we were their passengers. We were, and we quickly loaded up and headed off for Heathrow.

We had a very quick ride, as there was almost no traffic on the roads yet, but our driver told us that if we had waited another hour, it would have added yet another hour to our driving time. We arrived just before 6AM for our 850AM departure.

All of us made it through the kiosks to get our boarding passes - except Heidi and Chris, so we went to the regular line and everything was fine. No telling why it didn't work, but we all got our boarding passes, so no harm, no foul as they say.

Next up: Security, where Chris once again set off the metal detector with the plate in his collarbone. Ian, standing directly behind him in line, watched with some angst the whole wanding and patting down that might well await him as well (after all, he had nearly the identical plate holding a nearly identical break). It was not to be. Ian cruised through without a beep, so I followed happily, only to be stopped and frisked as something set off the detector. I opined that it must be my magnetic personality, and the security guard actually chuckled and said it was quite likely. Take that, TSA!

At any rate, given our early arrival, a gate had yet to be assigned for our flight, so it was time to find food and drink. Not much of a variety in Terminal 4, sadly. We had Costa Coffee, Starbucks, and Garfunkel's Restaurant as our options. At least there was caffeine available!

Once they had announced our gate (#7), we headed down there to chill until boarding. I grabbed a few pounds ( not weight) and headed back to where we had seen some PCs with internet access and blogged up the activities of Wednesday, my time running out as I checked to be sure the blog had really posted (it had), and then returned to the gate to wait.

And wait.

Yes, another "slight" delay. Boarding was scheduled for 7:50AM (an hour before departure), but didn't really start until 8:20. It's not looking good for an on-time arrival. Still, boarding went quickly, and we were on the plane with doors closed just about at our scheduled departure time.

By my calculations, our takeoff was at 9:45AM - less than an hour after scheduled departure, but that's really the time for leaving the gate, so we're well under an hour behind at this point.

The only real trouble there was on the flight back was that they had to reboot the entertainment system 3 times. The announcement covering that last reboot told us that if that didn't fix the problems, it was something that simply couldn't be handled at 38,000 feet, and they'd have to apologise. I didn't notice any real complaints, so it must have worked - at least for the most part.

We made up a lot of time - looking at the moving map of our flight, we noticed that we had taken a significantly more Northern route than we had on the way over, perhaps that avoided some stronger headwinds. At any rate, after a quite uneventful flight we landed safe and sound back in tropical Detroit (and there was no doubt it was tropical when we exited the plane and felt the air in the tunnel to the airport proper).

Items of interest at this point included: kids noting that suddenly their cell phones had service again; Judy informing us that she had sat next to the same guy as she had on the flight to London ten days earlier - and that he had slept the whole way both times; no one having much trouble filling out their landing cards; well you get the idea, there wasn't much of moment at that moment beyond getting out of that airport and back to our families.

So, we all got through the second security checkpoint with our newly-reclaimed luggage with no trouble and headed for the exit. Wait, where are Matt and Greg? They got pulled off into the secondary inspection room, so I stayed back to make sure they got through. It looked to me as though there was a tip that someone tall was doing something bad on that flight, as everyone I had noted as being tall on our plane was either coming out from or going in to that secondary inspection room.

Finally, both of them were out, and we got our group photo taken (thanks, Paul!) and off we went to be picked up and whisked away back into the bosoms of our various families. There's no place like home, you know, even if it's not in Kansas, and you don't have any ruby slippers.

Well, there's the story. Or rather, there's the bare bones of what we did and where we went. Now it's up to you to find one or more of us and get the details, to get the bird's eye lowdown on this caper, to get the inside story, to ... well, you get the idea. Ask us about it, but don't be surprised if we talk a lot longer than you had expected.

This was a great trip, and we all want to thank you for your support, and I want to thank all the travellers for being so great the whole time, and to thank their parents for letting them come along with us on this great adventure.

Grace, Peace, and Love,
Charlie