I made it safely to Austin, Texas for ApacheCon US 2006. The journey was, well, not much fun. Here goes with my cathartic rant about stupid rules and stupid planes.
The journey began pretty smoothly. I crashed at Paul's place in Surrey on Friday night, so I didn't need to get up until 6.30am on Saturday in order to get my flight from Gatwick. Check-in ran smoothly, I got some breakfast, and then boarded the flight.
Last week I was joking with Arjé about plane seating, describing how anyone sat in the center seat of the center aisle is basically consigned to hell for the duration of the flight. So it was more than slightly ironic that I ended up in that seat. That'll teach me. Just to reinforce the hell meme, there was a delay in getting flight clearance so the plane sat on the runway for an extra hour, without air conditioning. Within about 10 minutes the interior was up to over 30 degrees. Toasty.
When we did eventually get into the air, the air conditioning kicked in and they kept the cabin at about -5 for the entire journey. It was quite an impressive sight, seeing row after row of people huddling under blankets to try and keep warm.
Shortly after the in-flight meal was served, we hit some interesting turbulence - enough to send the cabin crew racing back to their seats, and to get some interesting "oooh", "aahhhhh", and "ARGGHHHHH!" noises out of my fellow passengers. I was more intent on finding ways of either drinking my cup of tea or preventing the contents from taking a walk during freefall. Quite a fun game, actually.
We landed at Dallas, Texas about an hour before the boarding time for my connecting flight to Austin. I then got to enjoy the hospitable welcome of a nation determined to offend all visitors and incite terrorism, with the usual probing questions and fingerprinting at passport control. I then sprinted through to pick up my suitcase, and ran through customs and on to security, where I was told to take my suitcase as carry-on.
After 10 minutes of queuing, I was hauled aside to have all my toiletries removed from the suitcase, including an almost-empty tube of toothpaste. I was given the choice of checking my suitcase and queuing again (and missing my connecting flight) or waving goodbye to shampoo, showergel, deodorant etc. It turns out that despite the lack of signs to tell us, you are not allowed liquids on internal flights either, and the customs guy that told me to take my suitcase as carry-on was wrong to do so.
And then I screamed in anger and frustration. The only reason I checked the bag in London was because of the liquid toiletries. I lost time reclaiming it and hauling it through customs, only to get screwed at the last step? I politely told the security staff to take my dangerous liquid products, zipped my case, and sprinted for the next terminal.
I got there just in time, and collapsed sweating into my seat on the plane. I then drank from my lethal bottle of water (ignored by the security scans) and pondered the full tube of lethal toothpaste in my rucksack (ignored by the security scans). What a farce.
Anyway, I made it here, I'm safe, and hopefully this will serve as warning to the folks following me that:
On a happier note, the PSP worked great, I watched several episodes of firefly and played Ridge Racer and Wipeout for most of the trip, and the battery didn't even get flat.
Posted by savs at October 8, 2006 5:29 PMWow, thanks, that gives me a pretty good impression of what lies ahead of me.. :-/
See you in Austin, Andrew!