London to Memphis (a recap)

This is my recap of the day...

I woke at 3.30am, had a shower and completed packing and my taxi arrived at 5.00am. I decided to take the 2 suitcases (rather than jamming everything into 1 case) so they were both very light but I did accidentally pick up one case in my left hand at one point….I won’t do that again as it was still throbbing an hour later! Instead I pulled the lightest case by linking my arm through the handle so all the weight was pulled on my wrist - it looked strange but it worked!

I caught the 5.27am train to London Bridge station (in London) and had to wait about 20 minutes for a train to Gatwick Airport. Unfortunately after the first stop they couldn’t get one of the doors closed so we had to get off that train and catch a slow one. That meant that I arrived at the airport at 7.15am instead of 6.50am as I planned.

I queued to check-in at the Continental Airlines desk but then I was told that as I had to get my tickets changed (due to having to cancel the flights to and from Gulfport airport) I had to go to the ticket desk. I was there for over 45 minutes as apparently I was only the second person they’ve had to do this for and they were unsure how to do it! I did get a $138 voucher so I hope Kasim plays a solo gig in the next year!

I then went back to check-in and had to queue again so it was 8.20am by this time and boarding started at 8.40am so I went straight to Departures. Of course there I picked the queue where the X-ray machine broke down which took about 10 minutes to fix!

Thankfully I made the flight okay and I had a window seat with nobody in the seat next to me. We took off promptly at 9.30am. There was nothing that interested me in their TV package (they only had one station anyway) and, for once, I didn’t have any work to do so I read a lot but it seemed a long flight….it was really as it was 10 hours! We had a nice enough brunch and then a snack just before we landed.

We landed at 1.30pm CST (= 2.30pm NYC time = 7.30pm UK time) at Houston, Texas - my first time in Texas so that’s another one of the US states ticked off for me! The guy gave me rather a hafd time going through immigration, asking me why I was going to Memphis and then why I was going to Florida (he seemed to think that having a holiday in Florida was unusual!), plus why I only bought my ticket that day! (I used to have problems with my old passport which showed loads of entries to US but since I renewed it things have been better).

I had to go to another terminal on the monorail but I couldn’t find anywhere to exchange my money into dollars (as I didn’t get time to do that in UK) other than if I went outside the transfer area.

I caught one of those little planes with just two people on one side and one on the other at about 3.30pm. The guy next to me was quite chatty (he started by asking why I didn’t have ice in my soda and then said that when he was in UK they never gave him enough ice in his drinks so he wondered if it was really expensive there!). He said that he was an evacuee from Hurricane Katrina going to start a new life in Memphis. His house wasn’t too badly damaged (wind rather than flood damage) but he couldn’t face the idea of another hurricane so he was moving to Memphis (where he had family) to start again. His son’s house was badly damaged so would be joining him soon.

We landed at Memphis Airport at about 5.00pm CST and I found somewhere to change some money. (I’m in Tennessee so that’s another state ticked off!) I caught the complimentary bus to my hotel and checked in by 6.00pm. It was called a Best Weston Executive Hotel but it was more like a motel with rooms that lead directly outside but it does have a swimming pool. At the front desk there was a note about a church which is taking in evacuees of the huricane.

My friend arrived at about 7.00pm and we drove nearby to a restaurant and had a long chin-wag! It’s the first time I’ve meet her (I spoken to her online for years) so that was good as she’s been a fan of Kasim’s for 20 years or more so we had loads to discuss!

I got back to my room by about 10.30pm and I was exhausted! It was 4.30am UK time and I’d been up for 25 hours so I soon fell asleep!

I woke at about 1.30am as some people were talking very loudly outside my room (plus my body probably thought it was the morning). I then discovered that my hotel room was directly under the flight path and planes fly into and out of Memphis all night long! I made myself a cuppa and read for a while before I got back to sleep at 3.30am.