So I got my Visa and got back to the US not without some drama. The visa turned up on monday about 4 hours after they promised it would appear but given it had been quite snowy and traffic hard I was willing to forgive that it also meant I was back from darkest Suffolk after Fishcon to receive my passport in person which required no form of ID.
So equipped I enjoyed my remaining days visiting people I’d not seen for a few years and generally having a relaxing time. Then on friday I got an email from British Airways saying my flight was canceled without explanation just a link to their booking system. By the time I saw this the phone system was naturally closed and all the online system could offer me was the same flight monday.
I got up early the next day to try and get some better option but the best they could do for me was book me in economy on the later flight on sunday (BA runs two flights a day from heathrow to San Francisco) but they couldn’t give me an economy plus seat then (which was what I paid for) and indeed they wouldn’t refund me the difference in ticket price between the two. So given the option of losing a days pay/a days holiday and going in comfort or going cattle class and losing money again I opted for comfort. It meant I would miss my book club which was annoying as I’d just finished the two books we were reading and was curious what others thought of them I’ll just have to console myself by looking at reviews on good reads or some such instead.
Next in the catelogue of disasters the online checkin system refused to work. It came to 24hrs before my flight and I tried to book my seat only to get refused when I got that far. A call to BA confirmed that my booking was OK and they summised that the airport had turned off the online booking system (perhaps just for me I don’t know) indeed when I did get to the airport (after we struggled through monday morning traffic on the M25 for a 9am start the worst time to be going to heathrow) the machine there wouldn’t check me in either and I had to go to a desk somewhere.
Eventually I got my boarding pass and then was ready to wait and then bumped into a old colleague I hadn’t seen for many years who was headed out to Santa Cruz to visit his new firms head office.
I waded through security and then played a bit of Borderlands 2 while waiting and was soon on the plane. I had the window seat which was pretty good I had some more room on my left and could shove the blanket and pillow down the gap. I also got a good view of London, the Thames, some offshore wind farms, Ireland, and a lot of cloud. The entertainment system was broken for most of the beginning of the flight but I read instead. Food was OK a lump of something that was somewhat like a steak. I generally prefer dishes that don’t require a lot of cutting up as there is not usually enough room use cutlery effectively in both hands. Fed I tried to get some sleep and succeeded to some extent reading my books for the rest of the time, ereaders are a wonderful invention your whole library at your fingertips.
We landed a little early but the queue for immigration was enormous stretching back to the gate which is larger than I’ve ever seen it at SFO which is usually a fairly quick and efficient airport. For the next two hours I queued and occasionally had a few words with my ex colleague who I would pass on each loop of the queue. All the while I was bombarded by video from multiple screens proclaiming how great America was set to a pseudo national anthem. Eventually I got to the front and joined another line mine had a load of idiots in it who couldn’t fill out the visa form and had to keep going back annoying the guy at the desk and slowing the queue right down. I reached the front eventually and the guy had a long discussion with me about SSD’s and why they were faster than mechanical drives. He eventually cleared me through and I had to find my luggage which had already left the carousel.
I had booked a ride with super shuttle back home which was pretty quick given the time of day it was rush hour looming. I got home and basically collapsed glad to have the whole rigmarole done with.
