Back In London

What a journey that was!


I started on the 4th in Seattle. Laine took me out to breakfast before driving me to the airport (thanks Lainey!) and I flew to Chicago where I had a 12.5 hour layover. Now, normally that would be just a huge pain- but in this case my dear friend Angela (whom I haven't seen in over a year and a half) lives there and not only did she put me up for the night- she also picked me up and dropped me off at the airport. That's love that is. 6am through the snowy streets of Chicago? We had a wonderful time chatting the night away and even managed to get some sleep so that I was reasonably rested for today's journey to London.


I was worried about security and how it would work with this being a connecting flight rather than starting off from Chicago initially but it was no problem at all and I had plenty of time to hunker down with my book at the gate. I was so hunkered down that I almost didn't notice Sarah Titterington sitting on the other side of the counter for the gate.

How cool is that? She was flying from Kansas and so we spent part of the plane ride looking at photos of a recent wedding that she and Dave went to right after New Years and catching up about the holidays.

The flight was supposed to get in at 10:45 which would have been just fine with the tube schedule. However, due to weather in both Chicago and London (it was snowing both places) we were an hour late. Which meant that the tube and the Heathrow Express were both shut down for the evening. Ridiculous.

I had spent part of the flight working on drawing from a photograph I found in the flight magazine and at one point was approached by a man sitting behind me,

"don't draw from someone else's work- you'll create bad habits. Draw from life."

"Well. Excuse me." I thought while his wife murmured "He used to be an art teacher"

By the time he came back from the bathroom I had got over whatever imagined slight there was and turned around to ask him more about what sort of bad habits that would create. I don't know that I totally remember the answer but we got to chatting. They're a lovely couple- Jeff and Amy and they're stopping off in London for two days before heading off to work on their foundation in Africa and see mountain gorillas and Jane Goodall. How totally neat is that?

It was good that I got talking to Jeff and Amy because that meant that when we arrived and discovered that there wasn't any useful public transportation it meant that I was able to share a taxi with them. There were four of us in the taxi so it was only 20 pounds for me to get from Heathrow to Kings Cross (near their hotel) where I caught a night bus that slushed it's way through the snow and got me home about a quarter to two.

I'm not sure if the snow is going to prevent school or not but we'll see soon. For now I am off to sleep for a bit of a nap before a (potential) full day's work.