Up, up in the air

I'm well on my way, somehow still awake despite having been up for 28 hours so far, and another 18 hours travel to go. So far it's all run pretty smoothly with only a few minor hitches. I left the house at 4am, said a bye bye, see you soon to my sleeping dog, and got on the road, stopping in Lampeter to pick up LD who is house sitting and set off for Bristol.

The roads were almost empty till we got near Cardiff and the early morning commuters appeared. We were treated to a suitably spectacular sunrise, starting with a peek of burgundy on the horizon, which spread, tinting the air purple then broke out into a fiesta of pink and baby blue fluffiness, then the pink morphed into orange and a giant vivid red-orange ball appeared dead ahead. Very pretty it was too.

I should have known better than to stop at a service station on the Welsh side of the border. At 6.30am there was nothing open except for the toilets so we didn't get the coffee break we wanted and even the machine in the petrol station bore a big sign saying 'Coffee machine out of order'. Some sort of anti-caffeine conspiracy perhaps and exactly the sort of thing that would ordinarily have wound me up something chronic, but I was in such a good mood that I just shrugged my shoulders and had another few pieces of buzz gum. Thank goodness for buzz gum.

The next minor hitch was the signage to Bristol Airport. I hadn't bothered to put the Sat Nav on because I thought it would be so well signposted that there would be no point having that shouting over the top of the music and clanging bells whenever I edged over 70mph an hour. That turned out to be a bad move. First I very nearly missed the motorway exit which came up with no warning, just a sign right on the junction that forced me to cut across 3 lanes in one fell swoop - fortunately it was a relatively quiet stretch and I could do that without endangering us or other road users. And there was no plane icon, that was what made it really hard to spot. Having driven past several enormous signs for Cardiff Airport, with a plane logo, I was looking out for something similar.

Anyway, I made it and then started to follow the still very subtle signs around the most tortuous route imaginable and then suddenly we noticed a sign to turn left off the dual carriageway, just too late to do anything about it - again, no warning at all. At that point I started to be very glad that I had wanted to leave quite so early as it meant we had a decent buffer. I managed to turn round a few miles later and then we were both on the case, scanning for signs, including quite a few that were semi-obscured behind overgrown foliage.

No more missed junctions, but a very strange route, at one point I'm sure I saw a sign saying Airport 6 miles, then 20 minutes later another one saying exactly the same - weird. LD was getting distinctly annoyed by the deviant signage (possibly exacerbated by lack of promised caffiene) but my good mood kept me going.

Once at the airport we unloaded, strapped Rolley onto the back of the scooter and headed for the terminal. I was glad then that I'd checked in the night before as the regular queues were distinctly long and the whole system seemed to have been put on 'Interminably Slow' mode. There was only 2 people ahead of me but the first too an extraordinarily long time, I have absolutely no idea what on earth was going on there. Finally I got the bag checked and my scooter labelled up with various pink tags and, at last, coffee.

By the time that was done and I'd bid LD farewell it was time to go up to departures and somehow, by the time I got there the plane was boarding already. No duty free shopping for me, just as well there wasn't anything I especially wanted to get. The carry on really started with the baggage handlers and the scooter. Why they needed to disassemble it quite so many times I don't know, but after demonstrating how to lift the seat off and get to the batteries I was hustled onto the auto lift to get onto the plane.

The next minor hitch was finding my seat occupied. MY SEAT, the only seat on the whole plane that actually suits my needs, my rather complicated needs arising from my own particular rag-bag of impairments and for which I had spent hours looking for a set of 4 flights all with that seat available and without having to do overnight stopovers at Newark. Was I cross? Ordinarily I would have been, yes. But this is me in unshakeably good mood, even the permacramp I've had in my left leg bicep for the last 5 hours or so is not going to shake it. So I politely informed an attendant that my seat was occupied and left them to sort it out.

It did take a good 5 minutes or so to sort out, during which time the left leg started to shake uncontrollably, but hey, what's a bit of uncontrollable shaking when one is en route to Flag is Up Farms. I even managed to smile at the seat nappers who were still trying to get me to have the aisle seat (my idea of a waking nightmare, with people brushing past me every 5 minutes).

So I got my seat, not a moment too soon and then had to sit and watch helplessly whilst 2 baggage handlers tried to dismantle the scooter - again. The seat just lifts off, you just lift it straight up and it comes out. I can do it (at a push) on my own, so one strong man with 2 hands should not struggle, let alone 2 strong men (I'm assuming that a certain degree of strength is a prerequisite of being a baggage handler). In the end there was 6 of them clustered around it, frantically searching for a hidden button or lever that would release the seat whilst I waved unseen at the window. Eventually they got it, then bizarrely had to man handle it onto the baggage belt which started several feet up in the air. All very strange, and a little worrying, if this performance is going to be repeated 3 more times. I think I'll give them better instructions next time. Lift it UP, just straight up in the air.

Seat napping couple haven't been very friendly but that's ok, I can do without enforced social behaviour with strangers but I do wish she'd put her leathery over-tanned elbows away as the right one was starting to infringe into my seat. Anyway, happy happy. I had a stroke of luck with the food, having forgotten to book a veggie meal until it was too late, I confessed as much but got a dinner anyway and it was rice based so suited me fine - well as fine as congealed airplane food ever can. The time is passing quite nicely, only another 3 hours on this leg.

I'm hoping to have time for a bit of gadget shopping before the next flight but that may be optimistic given the way things went at Bristol. Oh well, we'll see. It's all gravy as they say. They being fans of gravy presumably. Ok, so now to work out how to get out to the toilet as seat napping couple have both fallen asleep and they're too big, and I'm too wobbly to get out without their co-operation. Then I might try a movie and see if I can get some sleep that way - there's nothing like a movie that I actually want to watch for putting me to sleep, almost as good as Temazepam. Over and out for now.