SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND MAY 12 TO MAY 30, 2018 SATURDAY, MAY 12 TO SUNDAY, MAY 13 Both radio broadcasts and Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT to thems in the know) have been warning of closed interstate lanes, construction delays, and other impediments to our getting to the airport in reasonable tim e. Our flight to London is scheduled to depart Seattle at 1:20 this afternoon. My worrywart spouse wants to leave our apartment at 9:30 for what would ordinarily be a 45- minute drive. After some intense negotiation, we close our apartment door and head to the garage at 9:45. One thing that WSDOT did not (and could not) anticipate is that our 2017 Honda Accord would behave strangely as we approached it. The door locks opened/closed/opened/closed ... as we approached the inanimate beast. Surely it wasn't expressing its dismay at our leaving it for nearly three weeks? The two remote keys seemed to be behaving normally, but Lee was worried that we might not be able to get our luggage out of the trunk when we reached the airport. So she put hers on the back seat, but I (bravely) used the trunk for mine. The other concern is that we might not be able to lock the car at the airport, but this turned out not to be an issue. Well, we reached SEATAC's parking lot in 45 minutes (as I had predicted!) and entered the spiral ramps leading the various levels. On the electronic board, Level 5 was showing 300 spaces available to the left of the ramp. Since left is the direction we want to go (British Airways is near that end of the terminal), we turn in that direction and discover these "empty" spaces are occupied by cars, some 300 of them! We wind up/down the aisles and find nothing available. So we go to Level 6 where there is an ample supply of spaces from which to choose. We reach the British Airways counter quickly, check our two suitcases, and head to Security. We go to the priority line (on accounta we're y'know like royalty) only to be told, "You have a check mark on your boarding passes. You can use the pre-check line and you don't have to rem ove anything from your carry- ons." Cool! Considering that I'm carrying liquids (that are benign, but in the hands of a chemist, who knows?), laptop, Kindle, etc. I'm relieved. We are also free from having to remove shoes, belts, jockstrap (I use the singular here), and so on. (This stands in remarkable contrast to what is going to confront us - really just me - at the Manchester airport on May 31. And if you're wondering why I wrote May 31 and not May 30, well, you'll just have to wait until you reach that part of this document.) Over the course of the trip, I took some 948 pictures!! Oh, the joy of using a digital camera that does not require purchases of film and the cost of film processing! Only a relatively small number* have been __________________________________________________________________ *By this I mean a mere 693 or so. W ell, I did say relatively small. ____________________________________________________________________ uploaded to my Picasa account: some of the rejected pictures were poorly focused; others were poorly lit; some were very very very very repetitious; and some showed the two intrepid travelers in a less than flattering light. On the other hand, one can never have too many pictures of Japanese cities and scenery, right? I've posted the pictures in four separate albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/ronmagid On the way to the BA lounge, I stop at an airport shop and discover that today's issue of TIME is actually available. (Usually, these shops are two-to-three weeks behind in delivery.) W hen I then discover that it costs $6.95 + tax, I'm not as happy. The lounge offers a nice variety of snacks (crackers, cheese, pretzels, soup, but - alas - no crumpets, kippers, or black pudding) and various drinks but I don't over- indulge because I know that we'll be well fed on the plane. 2 At 12:45, we rouse our bodies and head to the gate where we board the plane at 12:55. We have Business Class seats 12A and 12B on the Boeing 777. Correction: our seats are in "Club World," not Business Class. Even though the class system seems to be alive and well in jolly old England, British Airways has renamed the various classes on its planes. Economy Class is now "World Traveler" and Economy Class Plus, of course is "W orld Traveler Plus." Alas, First Class is still just "First Class." Lee had already looked at the seating arrangements on Seat Guru and warned me that my seat, a window seat, would be facing backwards! That's also true on the 747 that we'll be taking on our return flight. Correction: as you'll learn when we get to May 30 in this travelogue, British Airways will cancel our Manchester to London flight and reschedule us for May 31 on a flight whose overseas segment will be on another Boeing 777. (Lee is heart-broken. She had chosen seats in the "upstairs" section of the 747 and now, sigh, we won't be able to take advantage of them.) The seats are arranged 2-4-2 which means that BA has managed to squeeze four more seats into Business Class than other airlines do with 1-2-1 seating (as in Delta's Boeing 777 and Airbus 330 planes). This feat of legerdemain is accomplished by making the seats quite narrow and by snuggling together a pair of seats, one forward- and the other rear-facing. Starting at the window, the paired seats are designated A/B, D/E/F/G, J/K. Seats B, D, G, and J face forward. The upper image shows the middle seats D/E/F/G but not seats A/B where Lee and I are. I went through all of the images I could find online and not a single one shows seats A/B or J/K - does British Airways have the equivalent of China's Great Firewall? The lower image is a bird's eye view of how seats like A and B are nestled together. Furthermore, although I have a window seat, the two windows are essentially useless: the one to my front (which is to the rear of the plane) is so distant and at such an angle that I can see, perhaps, through only the left-hand 20% of so; and it has a great view of the wing.* The one behind me (which causes me great ______________________________________________________________ *If British Airways really cared about customer satisfaction, they would have ordered the Seattle-based Boeing engineers to design a wing made of transparent plastic, just as Wonder Woman has on her aircraft. ______________________________________________________________ pain as I twist my neck) is mostly blocked by the back of my seat. Do all of the "window seats" have so difficult a window arrangement? I don't know. What else can I complain about? Well, there is no convenient storage area for books and papers, save for a drawer that is so far forward that it's necessary to unlock the seat belt and stand up in order to reach it. And the seats are too narrow and are poorly padded. Also, there is a barrier between Seats A and B that can be raised if one desires privacy or left down if one does not. This is fine for two people traveling together, but seats E and F, both facing backwards, have no such barrier - this imposes a level of intimacy on passengers in such seats. Furthermore, there is a foot rest that can be lowered from the rear of the seat at the far end of each cubicle/pod. The problem is that if the person in 13B (the forward-facing aisle seat behind Lee's 12B) has his/her/its feet propped on his/her/its foot rest and he/she/it is asleep ... and if someone in 12A (moi!) should want to get out and into the aisle, that someone would have to climb over the 12B person's outstretched legs. What an absurd design for an airplane! (But, to their credit, they do get 100% more seats in their version of Business Class than does an airline like Delta. Perhaps this is why they can charge less than Delta ($8,800 vs. $11,000). I'm too lazy to check out other airlines that also fly overseas routes. Maybe Delta is unique? Maybe not.) Am I the only one who thinks that this arrangement is absurd? No, I am not. Here is an excerpt from a much longer rant that appears at the Seat Guru internet site: 3 The layout is 2-4-2 which gives you a clue as to how cramped it has to be. This is purely a money-earning exercise by BA who just want the max £££'s from their business class customers, and blow their comfort - the 2-4-2 firstly means the seats are very narrow, the legs part of the seats/bad area is narrower than the seat section to accommodate the shoulders/seat of the adjacent passenger. - the narrow part means you can't sleep on your side, if that's what you do, as there's nowhere to bend your legs - the aisle seats are very open and exposed to the aisle.