London Day 1 and 2

These blog entries are derived almost entirely from the journal I kept over in London.

The first two days of the trip felt like one because we left the Sioux City Airport at 1:00 P.M. Central time, stayed in various airplanes and airports for the next 12 hours and arrived in London just in time to start another day.

I started the trip in what can only be described as “Logan” fashion by mixing up our date of departure and showing up at Larry Sensenig’s office a full day early. This beats the alternative of showing up a day late, but I would rather have spent the night before leaving for an eight hour plane ride in my own bed, instead of on a futon in Roadman Hall.

The next day (Day 1), I arrived in the Science Center parking lot at 10:00 AM to meet up with Larry Sensenig, Larry Martin, their wives Pauline and Laura, Kim Marth, and Amy Salton and rode to the Sioux City Airport. At the airport the rest of the group began meandering into the lobby. A quick run down of the group roster is as follows: the six people I mentioned above, Matt Armstrong, Kyle Mallicoat, Jarod Zobal, Tiffany Pribyl, Chantel Stratton, Kristen Westergaard, Tiffany Castle, Amanda Fangmeier, Kelly Sieh, Angela Phillips, Amber Bohnker, and Jill Bohnker. My first impressions of this group were: A) The male to female ratio of this group is extremely favorable; B) I don’t think I have met any of the other guys on this trip. After mingling for a while at the airport, discovering that the three other men on this trip were dating people in the group, I began to develop my second impression which went like this: A) The male to female ratio is still extremely favorable; B) Matt (my roommate), Kyle, and Jared were all cool, laid back sort of guys; and C) I am the only eligible bachelor on the trip!

At 1:00 PM, it was finally time for us to begin our journey. We all got on a rickety, propeller powered airplane, which I could tell would not fly in an especially smooth manner. We were seated in alphabetical order, which put me next to Matt, and directly in front of the Bohnker sisters. On the flight we experienced some minor turbulence which seemed to freak Jill out a good deal. After about an hour we arrived in Minneapolis and walked to our gate, which felt like walking halfway across Minnesota. It was here that we went to TGI Fridays and ate our last meal on the American side of the Atlantic Ocean.

At about 4:30 we loaded onto a big jetliner and began our journey across the Atlantic. I had a window seat and I think it is worth saying that the lush forests and numerous lakes in Canada make for an astounding view. On the plane I slept, read my book “The Lovely Bones,” and enjoyed the view of the clouds. However, once we made it to London the clouds were so thick that we were unable to land at the airport that we were supposed to touch down at. Instead we circled around for about 20 minutes until the pilot decided we would go to the Manchester Airport and land there for refueling purposes, and were told to expect a 20 minute delay. Unfortunately, we were not destined to leave that airport any time soon. Since we were not scheduled to land it took some time to find a puller vehicle to haul the airplane to the refueling area, then it took another hour or so until the refueling truck came, then some old man on the plane had a medical emergency and was not allowed to leave the plane until he was stabilized. So four hours later we finally left Manchester and arrived at the Gatwick Airport. As We left the airport we learned our first English cultural lesson, London traffic is insane, as we nearly got ran over by a bus. On the bus ride back our pint sized tour guide explained to us to be careful crossing streets because not only do they run in the opposite direction, but pedestrians do not get the right of way. On our ride back our tour guide, whose name was Madeline Rainbow and was only 4’11”, gave us a panoramic tour from the bus, but everyone was tired from the 12 hour plane ride and slept through the tour.

My hotel room was nice but had some distinct differences from what one would find in America. First of all it did not have a shower; instead it had a long bathtub with a sprayer attached to the faucet. To find the next noticeable difference you don’t have to leave the bathroom because the toilets don’t flush unless you hold down the flusher the entire time. Our hotel only issued a single key, which you were required to check in every time you left the hotel. This made for some difficult situations when Matt inadvertently took the key to somewhere else in the building or vice versa.

That night we walked to the National Gallery, which would be quite impressive if you are interested in paintings, which I am not. We then walked to a pub called “The Albert,” which had crappy food and is only notable because it is the site where I drank my first English alcoholic beverage, a beer called Kronenberg 1664. Right after that the Bohnkers, Tiff P., Kristin, Chantel, and I went to the “Bag O’ Nails” pub and each bought one beer, which we passed around in a circle and tried each one. I had a Leffe, but my favorite one tried was Jill’s Stella Artois. The bartender was from New Zealand and was extremely cool. She made fun of the rich British people and took pictures of us behind the bar. We then went back to the hotel and crashed.