mrry

So, if you’ve seen me in person some time in the past week, I’ll probably have gushed to you about the fact that I’m incredibly lucky to be going to SOSP 2007, at Skamania Lodge, Stevenson, WA. I’ve been up for 22 hours now, and my luck is giving way to psychosis.

Up at 4:30am, I left my (new-but-that’s-another-story) house at 6, caught the 6:30 bus from Cambridge to Gatwick (and was dismayed at the lack hostess, jolly or otherwise, on the National Express), then left Gatwick at 12:45 on an American Airlines flight to Raleigh/Durham, NC. Those with a keen, or even extremely vague, sense of geography will see immediately the flaw in my plan!

The transatlantic leg was fine, nothing special, and I got a good amount of work done on the plane. Arriving at the backwoods “Raleigh/Durham International Airport” was something of a come down. I’m no stranger to queues at immigration (although the hall was so small that they had to let us off the plane in stages), or having to recheck my luggage having cleared customs, but I was dismayed to find that, after doing this, all 300 tired and cranky passengers off the fully-loaded 777 were forced through a full laptops-out, shoes-off security checkpoint, even if they were leaving the airport! A little artefact of those halcyon pre-9/11 days when airport security was such that the entire townsfolk would congregate in the departure lounge for a barn dance….

Two hours there, and a bag of Fritos later, I was on another flight, this time to Dallas Fort Worth. A narcoleptic episode beginning just before take-off left me quite disoriented, but now I’m at DFW, tapping out an unnecessarily sardonic blog post, just trying to stay awake and not miss my four-hour flight to Portland. If you’re reading this, Henry, the AAdvantage miles just weren’t worth it.

Well, it’s the final day of my holiday-cum-business-trip in the USA, and I wasn’t relishing the four-hour journey from Boston back to New York, the long wait at the infamous JFK Terminal 8*, and the cramped overnight flight back to Heathrow.

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A couple of weeks ago, I returned to Scotland, because where else is better to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? As with all of my northern sojourns, my chief concern was returning with fistfuls of “queer Scotch money” that I’d be unable to spend in Cambridge. My anxiety was heightened by an article in the Sunday Times that detailed how the Sheraton Hong Kong charges a different (and poorer) rate to exchange Scottish banknotes.

You can imagine my amusement, then, as I stuffed my face at the Glasgow Airport Burger King, and watched as the till operator refused a new £20 Bank of England note, as “it doesn’t say ‘Sterling’ on it.” Oh such irony that this should be  the first English note to depict a Scotsman.

It’s just too bad the person affected was a bemused foreign tourist instead of an ignorant southern shopworker, but voyeurs can’t be choosers….

I remember, last year, seeing Jason Kottke’s digest of 2005 in terms of the cities that he had visited. “What a nifty idea,” I thought, and contemplated doing the same. That was before I realised it would be a four-item set, comprising {Stirling, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Culrain}, all in Scotland. Although, in retrospect, perhaps 2004 was even duller, comprising {Glasgow, Guildford, Crawley}.

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Many years ago, it would have been inconceivable for me to say, “It’s good to be back in England.” However, as I stood today, 27 miles south of Durham in the city’s eponymous international airport, this sentiment was first among my thoughts.

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Ignoring a bus tour of the Highlands, two whisky trips and a long weekend in Crawley, it has been five years since I last took a holiday. (We’ll be charitable and assume that the student lifestyle isn’t “just like being on holiday”. For once, it’s far less stressful.) I decided that, after completing my Masters, I would remedy this. I conducted an impromptu census of my international friends, and discovered that the largest single group is the Americans. (Malta scored an honourable second place: maybe next year!) So I called everyone’s bluff and took them up on their kind invitations to come and visit, and now I’m here. Thanks to Jen, Abby, Garth and Nicole, I’m seeing America in the best way possible. Rent-free.

In seriousness, though, I’m halfway through my stay here, and it has been great to see what real life is like in this country. I’ll blog more later about each part of my trip, but a preliminary investigation reveals that it “centers” around beef-eating, binge-drinking and an abject under-reliance on public transport.

So far, I’ve visited Boston, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Nantucket, Cape Cod, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. (I also visited Arlington, VA and passed through Delaware and Maryland, which totally counts.) Tomorrow I travel (intrepidly, by a combination of bus and commuter rail) to New York City, and next week I move on to Chicago and finally Wisconsin.

It’s been great fun so far, and I must give thanks again to Jen and Abby, who have been the most gracious hosts. There’s another near-fortnight to come, and so I think you’ll understand why I’m verily excited!