Like more or less everything I do, the journey was organised on a shoestring. There are far more comfortable ways of travelling to London, but none are cheaper than a National Express bus. We were travelling on a Monday so a hire car was out of the question, as I’d have to hire it from Friday or Saturday if I was to get an early start and it was upwards of £350 for something big enough. Before petrol. The train was out of the question due to the amount of luggage and there was fuck all chance of getting either a cab or a friendly lift the 300 miles or so it was from Keswick to Heathrow. We were well over the luggage limit for a National Express, so I was already pretty anxious that we’d have a problem on the very first leg of the Journey. I usually depend on my wife’s charm in these scenarios, but it was possible that a northern bus driver might be more easily manipulated by myself? Either way my concerns were well founded as the Scotsman loudly shouted words to the effect of ‘there’s no way that’s all going on’ as he counted the 12 or so bags encircling us. I’ve always been good at apologising and looking sorry, and I think it convinced him that with my help the existing bags could be re-organised as long as I realised that had he been busier, we would not have been allowed on. Whatever, we were going to London.
It’s at this point I feel duty bound to apologise for the detail I’m including here, but understand that this blog is my therapy, and as aware as I am that these are very much first world problems, I feel I need to document them not least for my own memory, which at best is fairly short-term focused. I find it difficult to remember the movie I’m watching during a toilet break these days.
Anyway, we hadn’t even got out of Cumbria before we discovered Libby had lost a shoe, Georgie couldn’t find her iPhone and Simone had left all her important citizenship validation papers at home (which was apparently completely the fault of someone other than herself) so by Telford services I was already yelling. The minibus taxi I’d ordered to take us from Victoria to Heathrow couldn’t get anywhere near the station to collect us, and a ridiculous amount of luggage. As I circled the station with the cabbie, Simone was being yelled at by the station staff for blocking the foyet with, a ridiculous amount of luggage, and having 3 children hyped on sugar and cabin fever who were apparently trying to run under buses. After removing some of the headrests in the VW taxi, whilst again being shouted at by the station staff, we managed to get it all in and had a relatively eventless journey to Heathrow Central Travelodge, and another largely sleepless night.
Along with Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Osama Bin-Laden, Michael O'Leary has successfully stripped all the magic from air-travel.
A typically frantic, only-just-made it Hoppa Bus journey to Terminal 3 landed us in the capable hands of Virgin Atlantic early the following morning. My wife describes them as a huge blanket being wrapped around you as soon as you enter the airport, with a comforting ‘It’s all going to be okay’ attitude, accompanied by a smile and too much makeup. When you regularly fly Ryan Air to the Canary Islands as we do, being kicked in the nuts as you enter the plane and then being treated like a hijack hostage for 4 hours whilst your comparatively expensive hold luggage is sent to a country other than that of your destination, seems more familiar than someone saying ‘it’s four kilos over but that doesn’t matter’. I fucking love Virgin. The bike and snowboards cost £190, which was exactly what I’d been told by a friendly customer service lady weeks before. The food was great, if a little pastry based, which gave me more wind than I was comfortable with in an enclosed area, and I watched a film called ‘Rampage’ with Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson which was exactly as shit as I thought it would be. All-in-all, a class act.
My doppleganger, Richard Branson with a nugget of pseudo philosophical bullshit so easily spouted from behind a mahogany desk. What if the opportunity he’s talking about is a chance to fly one of his planes during a mid-air emergency?
When we landed in Seattle a young Indian woman came up to me, and with great enthusiasm told me I was the spitting image of Richard Branson. Since we had just flown Virgin Atlantic I assumed he was obviously on her mind, and that it was more of a racist slur than an actual observation, but when she returned to me a second time during baggage claim I began to become offended. I haven’t had my hair cut this year, and truth be told it’s becoming a greying stringfellowy mane which, although has it’s moments, is undoubtedly aging me. I explained with a smile that since the man she was likening me to was in his 70’s, I couldn’t help but be a little insulted. She didn’t give a fuck. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the jet-lag.
We were collected by Simone (my wife)’s Cousin on her father’s side, Billy. For him it was the beginning of a symbiotic relationship in which he provided everything bar the gratitude. The first Oregonian to be fully put upon by the Fellows’ family.
For a Cousin she’d never met before, Billy was already stretched beyond the call. He’d travelled 5 hours in an 8-seater Toyota Sequoia with a trailer attached, in order to bring us 5 hours back to Eugene Oregon, where he lived, and within shouting distance (3 hours drive) of Bend Oregon, our final destination. We were to stay with him for a week.