At 10:23pm tonight, I got a call from the baggage delivery service, telling me he was around the corner. I went outside to meet him, and was stunned to discover that both of our bags were in his van, and appeared to be intact.

A couple of my books got pretty thrashed, but all in all, everything seems to have made it in one piece.

It will be a long, long time before I travel by air again.

After 5 blissful hours of sleep, disturbed only by dreams of lost bags and unforgiving gate agents, we arose before dawn, showered and caught the 6am shuttle back to Dulles. Easy time getting through security, and we arrive at the gate by 7am. There, we ask about our bags. One of the gate agents shows no sympathy and merely tells us our bags will get to La Guardia when they get there. The other makes an announcement for all of the other passengers who may have similar concerns about their own baggage. A few minutes later, another passenger goes up to the agent who made the announcement and asks her what she just said.

“Didn’t you hear me?” said the agent.

“Actually I was on the phone.”

“Oh. You were on the phone. I see.” She smiles curtly. Then she repeats what she had announced.

Boarding began on time, and while they were boarding the First Class passengers, this same gate agent stopped a young Asian man who was attempting to board with the First Class passengers. He was dressed a little bit “street”.

“Excuse me, sir. You have to wait until the next boarding call.”

He paused, looked at her uncertainly, then looked at his ticket. He started to back away from the podium.

“Are you in First Class?” she asked skeptically.

“Yeah,” he said, handing her his First Class ticket.

No apology from the agent, she just scooted him on to the plane.

When we finally get on to the plane, it pulls away from the jetway at 8:15am, right on time. Then we sit on the tarmac. The pilot tells us that Air Traffic Control at La Guardia is holding us on the ground at Dulles, due to high winds in La Guardia. They have closed all runways at LGA except one, which means all departing and arriving aircraft must use the same runway. The pilot emphasizes, too many times, that this is not a problem caused by United.

At 9:30am, the pilot announces that we have been cleared for takeoff. The engines start up and it feels like we’re about to move. Then the engines shut down. The pilot comes back on the PA and says that ATC has rescinded our clearance, and we have to wait again. He also makes some comment about the questionable competence of ATC. Yeah.

We can see out the windows on the right side of our plane a small Chataqua plane with the United logo. This is the 7:35am flight that S was originally booked on, and the plane where we believe our luggage to be. At 9:45am, the pilot comes back on the PA to tell us that we have to be moved to another runway, as the one we’re on needs to undergo some sort of repair. We taxi to the other runway, losing sight of the Chataqua craft and our luggage.

We take off soonafter our change of runways, and arrive at La Guardia at 11:00am. While walking to baggage claim, S gets a text message that the 7:35am Chataqua flight was canceled. Along with our luggage.

We go to Baggage Claim, and immediately go to the office area. Mr Chiu tells us that S’s bag is still at Dulles, but mine somehow got routed to Norfolk (Virginia, I hope fervently, not England). We get in a cab and just head home.

At 7:30pm, our bags still have not arrived, and someone at United’s phone center in Manila tells me that both of our bags should be at La Guardia, as mine was re-routed on another airline, and S’s was scanned at LGA at 2:45pm. Call back in 2 hours, and they will have an answer for me.

9:30pm, and I call Manila again. He tells me to call back in 2 hours and they’ll have something for me, or I can check the website. When I tell him the website is useless, as it still tells me they cannot locate our luggage, and at least when I talk to someone in Manila, they can give me little more detail, he tells me to give them 2 more hours. I point out that no progress was made in the last two hours, and can I please just talk to someone at La Guardia, he tells me that is not possible. I ask him what I can do to expedite the process, he tells me to check the website in a couple of hours.

S and I overslept, due to a malfunctioning PDA whose data had to be restored last night, and whose alarm settings were therefore screwed up, and missed seeing H and the kids before they left for school and various other destinations. I went to the local shop and picked up a couple egg and bacon sandwiches, we showered, packed, and were on the way to London on the 13:38 train.

It was the first time I had been completely awake during daylight hours passing through the countryside between Oxford and London, and saw many things I had not seen before, such as the 6 reactor nuclear power plant. I also had a chance to work a little on my novel, and am now past the 40,000 word mark and it looks like I may yet finish. (Though 10,000 words is still a solid 10 hours, with only eight days remaining.)

Arrived in Paddington right on schedule at 14:36, grabbed a taxi and were at Anna’s in Notting Hill before 15:00. Chatted with her for a bit, rested then started to work on my novel to finish the chapter I had started on the train. Unfortunately, the new step-down converter I purchased in Oxford blew in a matter of minutes, as is it only good for 30 watts, and apparently my laptop takes significantly more than that, but I am not sure how much more, as watts are not listed on the adapter, only volts and hertz and VA, whatever that is. (I think it may be volt amps, and if I remember my high school physics… are volt amps the same as watts? If so, I am significantly above the 30, clocking in at 115.)

So, I am now typing this on my quickly draining laptop, hoping I will find a larger step-down tomorrow and be able to charge the battery for the trip home. Needless to say, this will be a short entry.

Dinner at the Durbar, one of my favorite restaurants in the world, then a quick stop at Sainsbury’s for Coke (incorrigible American habit) and beer, then home to make phone calls to loved ones (it is Thanksgiving, after all), and then to bed.

S and I had a quick bite, then headed to the train station to catch a bus to Woodstock and Blenheim Palace. Blenheim is the ancestral home of the Duke of Marlborough, and the birthplace of Winston Churchill, first cousin of the 10th Duke of Marlborough.

As an American, I am always stunned by the sheer extravagance of the British royalty and dukes and earls and so forth. The size of the palace and the surrounding grounds were almost overwhelming, and the thought that a family still lived there was rather shocking. For I could not help but wondering what they do now. I am sure the peerage system was necessary in past centuries, but today just seems like a bit of a joke. A bad joke to those not born into the proper families.

While taking the guided tour, a nice seeming man named Alan showed us around the state rooms. We were shown a portrait of the current Duke, the 11th, painted of him sitting in his study. Alan told us that while the portrait was being painted, the artist had a television by him, turned around so “his Grace” could watch the World Cup while having his portrait painted. I’m sure it was meant as a humanizing touch, to say, “See, the Duke is a normal bloke, just like you and me,” but it had quite the opposite effect on me. All I could think was that this man was just Paris Hilton, a man born into wealth and privilege, far less important than the newest member of Parliament newly elected from the smallest, least important district of the UK, and what had he ever done to merit a portrait, let alone an entire palace?

We then took a very bad tour of the “Hidden Story” of Blenheim, which was basically a bad animatronic exhibit, highlighted with bad actors on video screens. We thought we would have the opportunity to see more of the palace, but instead were led through a series of locked rooms, with stage sets built in them that obscured all the parts of the actual rooms in which they were contained. The rooms forced you to watch the exhibit for four minutes, then the doors would unlock and you would be led into the next room, which would remain locked for another four minutes, and so on ad nauseum. Possibly the longest 36 minutes of my life.

But the trip wasn’t a total waste, and I actually quite enjoyed the rest of it. When we got on the grounds, I spotted several ring-necked pheasants, and had the opportunity to rid myself of the Argentine coin I had been carrying. I have a ritual, of keeping a coin from the last country I visited, and then depositing it in a body of water in the next country I visit. In this way, I have left coins in Trafalgar Square, the Seine, the Rio De La Plata, the Thames, off the coast of Uruguay, and the Tower of London.

The Tower of London was where I left my first, a few summers ago when S and I were traveling during my vacation-from-work period in 2005. We had been to Washington, DC about a month prior, and had been through the Smithsonian and the National Archives, among other places. While in the Tower of London, I walked through the Crown Jewels exhibit and felt a swelling of national pride, a feeling quite uncommon to me these days.

I remembered my trip to DC, where all the museums and national places of interest were free. Whereas the Tower and Blenheim Palace cost 20 pounds and 14 pounds respectively, the only cost of admission to the places in DC was your ability to get there. It didn’t matter how much money you made or whether you could afford it; the government was open and accessible to everyone, free of charge.

But what struck me most was the contrast between the Tower and the National Archives. The emblems of state of the British Empire amounted to little more than a huge pile of Jewelry. The emblems of state of the US were pieces of paper with words written on them.

We slept past 11:00 this morning, catching up on the sleep we missed on the red eye, I suppose. At any rate, it felt great to be well-rested.

Started a little slow, but finally got out of the house around 2:00pm and walked into downtown Oxford. Stopped to get some pounds sterling at the ATM, then walked to the Covered Market for some lunch, S had a sausage roll and I had a chicken and ham square, neither of which was particularly good, but not horribly bad either.

Walked up to Blackstone’s, one my favorite bookstores in the world, to check out new English bestsellers. Last time I was in Oxford, two years ago, I picked up How to be a Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes. I finished it before I left the country, and was absolutely thrilled with it. I found out later that the book was hugely popular in the UK that year, being one of those books that everybody read and was talking about, the perfect Christmas gift for someone who had everything, etc. Not being in the UK, I was unaware of this and bought and read a book I might otherwise have avoided simply due to its popularity, were I and the phenomenon in the US.

After reading that book, I started looking at British natural history books, and discovered that they have a kind of unusual way of approaching the subject, generally from a first-person perspective, and one that I find refreshing. First, they seemed to have invented the natural-history narrative as we know it. Second, in the US, these books are barely on the shelves, let alone bestsellers. Being able to find them readily was for me a highly-anticipated moment.

On their bestseller rack were some of the same things we see in the US: Dawkins and Hitchens fighting with God, some crime fiction, other familiar faces. But at the bottom, were two that I will never see on any US bestseller list (unless, of course, Oprah picks it up). First was The Cloudspotter’s Guide, a book about, yep, clouds; and the other was Crow Country, another book about birding. I didn’t get either one, though I did pick up another by one of the authors. I still may pick them up, if I get a chance in another bookshop.

After Blackwell’s, we started back to the house. Decided to stop by Sainsbury’s for a loaf of La Brea sourdough. For those of you who don’t know about La Brea, it is a bakery in Los Angeles. The story has it that they entered a sourdough bread contest in San Francisco, alleged home of sourdough bread. La Brea won. The judges, so skeptical were they that an LA-based bakery could out sourdough all of the SF bakeries, declared that there had been an error and would have to do a do-over. La Brea won the do-over.

La Brea is sold all over the West Coast, and is very hard to find in New York. There is one place I know of in Brooklyn that sells it, and now apparently D’agostino’s has started carrying it. But Sainsbury’s has carried it in England for several years. Imagine our surprise the first time we saw it in the store here. Anyway, now we make certain to get a few baguettes for snacking every time we are here.

Stopped by Marks and Spencer, just because, and then headed back to the house. Conversation with H & H and the kids, Indian take-out from around the corner, and now, to bed.

Our plane from JFK to Dulles was delayed. Supposed to leave at 7pm, but the aircraft didn’t arrive until after 7:00, and by the time it left the gate, it was well past 7:30. We finally got out on to the taxiway, and the captain said there were 30 planes in front of us. After waiting for an hour, we were finally wheels up at 8:40.

We asked the attendant if we were still going to make our 10pm flight to Heathrow, and he told us that there should be no problems. Flight time was only 30 minutes, and, according to the information he had now, though that of course was subject to change, we would be arriving at gate C4, right next to the Heathrow departure gate C2. He was lying.

S had already checked online, and knew that our arrival gate was A3, in another terminal, and it would be tough for us to make the connection. The problem apparently was that there about 6 other passengers on the small Chataqua Airlines plane who also had to make the Heathrow flight. In order to keep us all calm and happy on his flight, he had probably been instructed to lie to us in order to avoid any incident.

When we actually arrived, at gate A3, it was 9:30, and our other flight was already boarding. The 8 of us trying to make the connection started to run through the airport. I stopped a gate agent, telling her that I had a pregnant partner and had to make it clear across the airport, and would she mind holding the other flight for just a few minutes until we could get there? Sorry, but we can’t do that, she said. So we ran.

I got there first and made sure they held it, and we were both on the plane and in our seats about 10 minutes before they pulled away from the gate. Then, the plane stopped. Apparently there was a mechanical difficulty, so we waited another 20 minutes, in the middle of an active taxiway, while they addressed this problem. But, since the plane had actually pulled away from the gate, it was considered an “on-time” departure. Had we missed this plane, because it pulled away from the gate for the sake of an on-time departure, then sat within eyeshot of the gate for another 20 minutes, I might have been on the evening news.

Instead, though, we made it into Heathrow, and after the 17 mile trek that is walking from the gate to the exit in Heathrow, we made it to the bus station, where again we ran to catch the departing bus for Oxford just in the nick of time.

Arrived Oxford, unbelievably, around 1pm local time. We talked with H about how grateful and happy we were to have actually made it only an hour later than our original itinerary, and S pointed out that it is a sad day for American travelers when we are grateful and surprised that our travel plans fail by only an hour.

Spent the rest of the day with H & H and their two lovely children, only leaving the house to pick up some Indian food from the local take away shop on the corner. Oh how I have missed English curry.