The Day is Mine

Well, everyone, all your blog are belong to us. I am commandeering Jo's blog for the next 20+ days to relate our experiences, photos and videos from the trip. I kept a relatively detailed (relative + detail = funny combination) journal during our travels, so I'm just going to transcribe it word for word for these posts.

WARNING: sometimes it gets a little personal and in my head.

WARNING 2.0: sometimes on our trip I was a little grumpy because of the weather, hence the swears. But I want it to be as honest, so I want it to be word for word.

WARNING 3.0: I really did love the trip, but the first day was a little rough, so be prepared for this entry. Also (if you couldn't tell already, I am much more wordy than Josephine. So feel free to skim and scan if you'd like. just know that if you do skip over anything, you're lame. And with my introduction behind us, thank you for listening, and please comment and enjoy. Here we go:

everything we took with us

PROLOGUE:

3 goals for the other side of the world:

1. See/interact with incredible, historic and interesting places, cultures and people.
2. Enjoy the unplanned moments as much as the planned.
3. Leave anger, impatience and stress in the gutters of Europe.

Day 1: I Hate Chicago

On the plane to Chicago right now. It was delayed. For . . . absolutely no reason at all. I am pissed off. If we have the same old Jo and Doug bad travel luck (please see Jamaica, and getting stuck in Las Vegas, Charlotte, Aruba, etc.), I will just snap.

I've planned the crap out of this trip. I'm acutally a little worried the first few days may seem too rigid because of it. We'll hit our comfortable stride at some point, I'm sure. Sooner rather than later. I have to unwind somehow. I'm worried about flights and money and weather and patches. I worry too much . . . even about meticulously staying inside these lines in this leather journal that makes me feel like Hemingway. No more worrying.

* * *

9pm Greenwich Mean Time. Still not in London. We should be enjoying the end of MacBeth right now as yardlings in the Globe Theater (one of my trip highlights). Instead we're 37,000 feet in the air and cutting up our London itinerary. I despise, with all the emotion, anger and over-dramaticness I can muster, the US airline industry.

We spent the night in Chicago airport last night. It was freezing (as airports always are at night), and I had to sit there and watch my petite wife freeze and struggle to get some sleep and me not be able to do anything about it. When we landed at Chicago from SLC, we could see our original plane waiting at the gate. By the time the cattle got off the damn plane and we ran to our gate, the plane was gone. I lost it, as usual in these situations, and swore and complained. Jo got pissed at me (like she always does in these situations), and we had a big fight.

I didn't sleep at all. I walked the opposite direction down a moving sidewalk and then let it carry me back to the end for an hour. I watched a mouse come in and out of the walls by our gate. I yelled at a janitor in the bathroom who wouldn't let me use it and then used it anyway (he was just standing there). I thought about how much the US airline industry hates its passengers.

I felt more alone than I think I've felt in a long time. Walking up and down the terminal halls of an abandoned O'Hare airport, cursing the world for bringing bad weather to my vacation, causing a rift between Jo and I at the onset of it and erasing a day of trip we will likely never be able to take again. I won't let this ruin the trip, but it sure dumped all over the first day of something we've been looking forward to, working for and paying for for a long, long time.

We missed:
- The Tower of London
- Thames River Cruise
- MacBeth @ the Globe

(It gets better and happier I promise.)