Warning: Probably too much detail! Feel free to skim!

Friday, 9/5

We both worked ½ day; I went into the office and Jim worked from home. We had a 6:35pm flight out of Atlanta and I was anxious not to be late, so we left home at 2:45, kissing Sarah and Dylan goodbye in the driveway. Ehren came with us so he could drive the car back home. Having checked in online via BA.com, we only had to drop our bags at the desk, which we accomplished by 4pm. Now, more than 2 hours to kill!

We got a bite to eat at the food court and then found our gate. I had gotten us seats in an exit row which would give us more leg room than usual, but it proved to be one of the most uncomfortable flights of all time for me. It was a British Airways 777 and we were in cattle car class (euphemistically called “World Traveller” by BA) and although we were at a bulkhead, it was several feet in front of us. This meant no seat (or bulkhead) pockets into which to slip our paperbacks or sudoku books (or plastic wrapped sleep mask/socks/toothbrush/toothpaste/blanket kit issued to each of us, which in my case ended up on the floor behind my feet). So I’m sure there are many, many more inconvenient things in life than this flight was, but I’m hard pressed to remember any of them.

Several feet in front of where we sat was the flight attendant’s jumpseat, affixed to the aforementioned bulkhead. And there was also what seemed to be the only toilet on the plane next to our seats – a very high traffic area indeed – with a very loud flusher. It went off every couple of minutes, all thru the night. I imagine human waste ejecting at rocket speed over the Atlantic. Not to mention parts of South Carolina. Bermuda. Ireland.

I’ve been on flights where those of us in cattle car class were asked to use the toilets in our own cabins. But I remember seeing, on this BA flight, plenty of people from the class ahead of us – World Traveller Plus – coming back thru the curtain to use our toilet. I was a bit miffed. They had wider, leather seats. Why not their own toilet?

I got the middle seat for this flight over. I sat between Jim and a very nice British fellow named Richard, who is now an American citizen and has been living in Atlanta for many years. He was on his way to England to see family and then join up with his partner for a drive around the Lake District, and then they were going to take the Queen Mary back to the US. He might have talked to me the whole way to London, but I was uncomfortable turning to listen to him, I wanted to read, and I was just uncomfortable in general, squashed between the two guys. So I discouraged him from talking by putting my nose in my book.

The movie selection (we each had our own TV screen – those with seats in front of them had back of the seat screens; we had these screens attached to the armrests that swung up to view or down out of the way) sounded quite good, but I didn’t understand that all the movies and TV programming started at the same time and then ended when it had all shown one time. I thought it was going to be “on demand” (what an idiot I am) and when I finally turned on my TV, all the movies were more than half over. I saw the end of Recount, the end of the Helen Hunt movie The She Found Me, and most of episodes of Friends and Frasier. Yay. Because there was no under-the-seat-in-front-of-me storage, my carryon was in an “overhead locker” and a big pain the butt to try to get to. I pouted for much of the flight. And tried to read. Or sleep. Not a lot of success at either.