Day 14 London Departure, Flight to the USA

As I mention in an earlier post, my ticket from Houston to Cairo, Cairo to Houston was booked with Frequent Flyer miles.  This pretty much means you take what you can get when you can get it. In my case the only ticket I could find was a mix of economy, business class and First Class.  Yes it burned up all my FF miles that I saved for the last 4 years but I knew it would be worth it.  Booking this way gets you where you’re going, but in our case the family needed to split up from London to Houston.  Grace and the kids on Continental, direct to Houston and I end up on Air Canada doing the milk run. London, Toronto, Chicago, Houston.  This also presented a challenge at the Airport in London because the flights were leaving from different terminal that are 20 minutes apart and my flight was leaving  20 minutes before Grace and the kids.  Logistics, Logistics.  Wouldn’t like it easy.  Rise and Shine family at 5:00 AM we have lot to do.   Grace pumped everyone full of tea and we kissed Grace’s Mom as she will be staying in London. My kids are troopers after 4 hours of sleep I drag them into 30 degree weather and not a single bitch. In fact they were laughing at each other, because they both fell asleep on the bed without even getting under the covers, and then chased each other around the bed all night trying to find some warmth.  After a 15 minute bus ride we arrived at terminal 4 and check in Grace and the kids. No issue as it went  smooth just like clockwork.   Next it was time for the travel briefing.   Kyle is my secondary navigator and in charge when I’m not around.  Getting everyone to the gate on time and in Houston he is responsible to make sure that they find the right baggage claim, exit the ground transportation door and seek out the Hotel bus.  Why Kyle you might ask, as he is the youngest member of the family.  Because he can navigate all those darn video games in his sleep and that requires jumping, dodging, leaping, reading, avoiding and in some cases shooting.  Well at least the first five add some value to the situation.  Anyway he has proven time and time again that he can find his way thought subways, Buses, Trains and Airports.   Plus he can see more than 20 feet without glasses which count Grace and Ti out of the picture.   After getting them squared away I’m off to my terminal.  London’s airport terminals are connected by buses and trains. In my case I needed to catch a train from terminal 4 to terminal 3. They do something in London I have not seen before as the train approached they prevented everyone from boarding until a cabin search was performed.  Yes London has had some train and bus bombing in their past so I welcomed the extra security. 

Getting to the terminal was effortless as I just followed all the well marked signs and in about 30 minute I was standing at the Air Canada check in counter.  Well at the end of a long line that ended at the counter.  All the self service terminals were down and I don’t think they were staffed to deal with the issue so it took another 30 minute to get check in.  No problem I stayed true to Graces wishes and arrived at the airport with at least 2 hours before departure.  This morning we arrived an extra 30 minutes early to accommodate my terminal change and a few minute for weather related delays.   Checked the watch and I have 7:45.  30 minute before the gate will open for my 9AM flight.  Looked at my boarding pass and could not tell if breakfast was include so I stopped at a takeout and order a breakfast plate thinking McDonald big breakfast size. Boy was I wrong they serviced up a large dinner size plate with 1 sausage,3 large strips of bacon. (The size you would serve if you killed the pig yourself) 2 eggs, 2 hash browns, bowl of beans, two slice of toast.  I had trouble choking all this down and I can eat.   For a tip well, I did not have Euro’s, English pounds or US dollars so my waitress received (you got it) Egyptian pounds equal to about two dollars. No problems there are exchange booths all over the airport and I didn’t what to leave her empty.  She needs that money to purchase protein powder to build some muscles to carry those big plates.  After walking to the gate feeling like a sumo wrestler who has been stuffed to fattening size, I was pleasantly surprised to find that…. hey this leg was a first class leg. Up to now I was so busy with everything else so I didn’t bother to look.  I must say Air Canada does First class in style.  These seat look like your own self contained cockpits with all the controls included.   I have included some pictures and a snap shot of the seat manual.   

Needless to say the flight was easy.  I watched three different movies, enjoyed some good French wine and enjoyed life... When Grace reads this I will need a flack jacket to shield myself from the comments. What's a man to do, it was a free ticket. Kyle will dig the seat manual. Tronto is a big and very nice Airport. After sleeping on the London to Toronto flight I'm ready for a nap. My flight to Chicago looks to be a small commuter plane so that's good.   I'm often asleep before they take off because the smaller engines vibrate more that the big ones do.  Once on board the flight we were informed that because of snow in Chicago we would be taking off 30 min late, it ended up being 45 minutes. Once in Chicago I could see what caused the delay. Snow and more Snow, This also delayed my next flight to Houston by another hour and I was lucky.  I started to see canceled flights to snow prone areas like New York.  My day day really grew.  I was schedule into Houston at 5:30 PM and the Airline added the Chicago leg to my flight so I was now scheduled to arrived in Houston at 7:30. Well I finally arrived at 9:00PM after all the delays then waited another 30 minutes for the Lugage and the Hotel bus.  Long day after starting in London very early this morning.  Off to bed it back up at 5AM to catch another flight.. One more flight and I will be ready for a good swim at Ko Olina.