Wednesday April 30/Thursday May 1

 

Every year I seem to get sloppier and more blasé about my trips.  This time I tried to be conscious of over purchasing things like I did last year to France.  The last week seemed a mad rush of ad hoc assembly rather than a well organized preparation.

 

I stayed up until two in the morning before getting up at six this morning to pack, in order to maximize my sleep time on the plane.  I was just putting the finishing rushed touches on my bags when Andy arrived to do an Elmer’s breakfast.  I’d stuffed myself as is my routine to avoid the airline food at all costs.  We had a decent breakfast as usual, talking about AV tech things, his cars and his pal Bud’s blues music.

 

The flight to MSP was mostly uneventful, but I felt quite cramped in my seat.  Visions of the way slaves were packed into slavery ships filled my head and contributed to my discomfort. Apart from being rousted from my slumber for food very unnecessarily, I couldn’t have asked for much more beyond space.

 

Arriving at MSP I saw a bad omen.  Parked at the gate next to our arrival gate was a small assortment of emergency vehicles, lights flashing. This included a fire truck, an ambulance and perhaps a few varieties of airport security and police.  My first thought was terrorism, and that flights were going to be messed up or delayed for God Knows How Long. I worried too that something had been wrong with the plane I was on and somehow we’d just made it to the airport.

 

This was the reality of traveling post-9/11.  I never really worry much about the threat that terrorism posed to me personally, figuring that if my lot in life was to die at the hands of someone proving a point, so be it.  The increased checks and longer lines of travel in the post-9/11 world did not seem to bother me much either.  In general, I never saw how the extra security precautions delayed me anyway.  But this scene had the air of Bad Medicine, as an Indian might say.  It wasn’t that I thought something was wrong. It was that I knew something was wrong, very wrong.

 

Soon enough I realized that either of the scenarios I conjured up were unlikely for the small contingent of help represented.  As I left the plane, I let the picture slip from my mind for a bit, and tried focusing on my adventure ahead.  Stepping off of the ramp I found a crowd milling strangely about and then I noticed a ring of EMTs around a gurney.  The guy walking in front of me slowed to rubberneck or linger.  I tried not to break stride but looked over just in time to see an older man’s face drained of life, just as the sheet was pulled over it.

 

I continued on to the restroom to make a pit stop and wet my hair down.  On the way out, the EMT’s were pushing the gurney past me.  A crowd of flight attendants were gathered nearby, obviously in shock.  The man’s face was covered, of course, but the bottom half of his legs were exposed for the too short sheet.  I reflected on his shoes, socks and the hair on the exposed part of his legs. I thought about the last morning he put on his socks.  I wondered about the last day I will put on my socks.

 

A brush with mortality certainly does not bode well for a trip like this.  Later, I could pinpoint this event as the beginning of a change in me personally.  Up until this time I had not considered how limited my life really was.  Beginning with the motionless face of a man I never knew that checked out in Minneapolis, I began the process of seeing my own death, which culminated with my father’s passing some months later.

 

The flight from MSP to LGW was on a slightly newer plane with an inch or two more for my legs, thank God.  I sat by a kind old English lady from Croydon, who provided me with occasional conversation.  Against all better judgment, I ate the vegetarian pasta, but abstained form any other solids offered me during the trip.  I writhed in discomfort for most the flight, struggling to sleep.  An Irish Pierce Brosnon movie failed to interest me in the least, although I did watch a new car model segment introduced by Kristi Yamaguchi, which made me a little warm under the collar.  I wondered if I had an Asian fixation as my thoughts rolled around.

 

In my twenties, I’d avoided Asian women.  When I arrived at the University of Oregon there was a plethora of them, so much that the school was jokingly called The University of Oregon—Tokyo.  I always felt like dating Asian women was taking the easy way out for some reason, and that I ought to more seriously focus, rather than tom catting around. 

 

Several years later, when I began volunteering as an English language tutor, I came in much closer proximity to Asian women.  I dated a few and let down my resistance, which was probably a wise thing, although I never developed a preference for Asian women over anything else at my immediate disposal. But one woman I met, ethnically Chinese but born and raised in Brazil, captivated me around this time.  She was a tall and slender beauty, with long shining hair and a brow that would curiously crinkle when she was vexed or thinking.  Julli and I went out a few times, but I never seemed to connect with her.

 

Getting through the sprawling LGW was faster than I expected.  I took the cheaper slow train to central London thanks to Rick Steves, through Croydon to Victoria station.  Again I remarked at the garbage, graffiti, rot and rust of working England.  It rained gently and the trees swayed with the wind.

 

I found myself at Victoria Station well before 11 o’clock and far too early to check into the nearby hotel.  I spied some seats at the end of the platform and took advantage of them immediately, resting and rearranging my things and writing in my journal.  A couple of youngish Canadian girls from BC sat by me and asked if I smoked.  They were quite relieved that I did not.

 

So here I sat, alone, in the land of my ancestors. Being so recently in the USA, it seemed strange that I was really in the UK, sitting, in the middle of London with absolutely nothing to do.  The Canuks made me laugh, since they were so similar to me when I started traveling.  They were well and truly appalled at the amount Europeans smoked, and would do anything to escape it.

 

I killed as much time as I could before wandering towards the hotel around 11:30am. I had no trouble at all finding the place, which was somewhat unfortunate since I was so damned early.  I planned on just dropping the big bag, but luckily I received a warm welcome from the hotelier.  He named me as soon as I came down the long corridor into the reception area, and I recognized his voice immediately from my reservation calls earlier.

 

During my reservation call a week or so earlier, I expected him to be a Pakistani or an Arab, so upon seeing him I was quite surprised to see a broad jawed white guy. I asked where he was from and he turned out to be an Irish Catholic from Belfast.  I appreciated his long commentary and recommendations, although it ran a bit long towards the end. Much to my surprise, he let me into the room at about noon.

 

The nice thing about Rick Steves is that all of his recommendations often have some character.  This guy was chatty and friendly, and made me feel most welcome after traveling a harrowing amount.  Often, as in this case, I immediately felt at home and comfortable, which always improved my stay, no matter the conditions.

 

My room at the Winchester hotel cost me 75 GBP per night for a small double bed, which was ball bustingly expensive for me, but reasonable for London.  Well, for 75 GBP at least I wasn’t trapped into a typical European single closet.  Immediately I peeled off my clothes and put in the ear plugs.  I crawled under the covers to saw some logs.  The room was quiet enough, but as soon as I was settled and comfortable I heard some tapping.  I took a minute to register it being my door and I got up in my boxer shorts to answer it. I opened the door to find one of the eastern European maids I’d seen coming in along with a youngish guy.  They wanted to clean the bathroom, which I recognized as being undone when I arrived. They saw I’d been sleeping and I bargained for an hour, although I couldn’t get to sleep after that point.

 

As surely as anything, my deference to maids and the hotel staff was a personality weakness. I’d been told for years that the customer is truly god in a European hotel, and can demand just about anything.  For the prices I was paying, it would seem reasonable.  But my mother’s legacy of being unobtrusive and loathing to inconvenience other people runs deep within me.  I believe it has served me well at times, but just as often has been a handicap in my life.

 

Being thusly deprived of slumber, I kitted up and headed out on the street, leaving the door unlocked on the moussed up foreign guy’s clean up team’s instructions.  I found my way to the tube and ended up buying a single ticket to Oxford Circus. I expected to find the Virgin Megastore that I’d seen with Scott once before, but located no evidence of it, so I took a relaxing yet somewhat crowded and competitive walk down Regent Street to Piccadilly Circus. There I found Tower Records, where I ended up purchasing One of Those Days in England by Roy Harper for Mags.  I stumbled upon a Virgin Megastore which was a disappointment.  I began walking Shaftsbury towards Soho but felt a blister developing on my big toe and headed back.

 

Mags was my penpal, and we’d written back and forth for several months before my arrival.  In my rantings, no doubt I mentioned my passion for Roy Harper, amongst others.  Mags gamely humored me with these and my consistent mock outrage of “You haven’t heard of…”.  Mags later told me that when I’d mention people like Roy Harper, John Cale and Badfinger that she’d look them up online and then get a vague inkling of what they were so long ago.  I promised her that I’d bring her a sample of Roy Harper, so I picked up his most accessible CD here for her.

 

About this time I personally had a CD library of about 1000. I wasn’t really finding anything to add to my collection, so unless I was in the mode of trying new things, the chances of me finding a rewarding collectible were pretty slim.  CD stores now became an exercise in disappointment more often than not.

 

After resting, reflecting and contemplating at the fountain in Piccadilly, I took the tube to Bakerloo and Madam Tussards.  There was essentially no wait at Madam T’s. Much to my surprise, the “portraits”, the wax figures, were not roped or walled off, but freely posed throughout the floors.  The first room was an assortment of Hollywood celebrities, modern and ancient, including Hugh Grant, Michael Caine, Sly Stallone, Arnold and so on. Tourists stroked, touched and posed with the waxworks.  Some of the figures were almost startling in their life like looks. The impression of Richard Nixon was my particular favorite, along with a particularly dour Queen Victoria.  Some of the figures were displayed or arranged with current political events in mind.  Putin, Schroeder and Chirac stood in a group on the side of a stage which Bush and Blair shared with a UN podium.  Saddam Hussein was off to the other side.  Special admission (without a charge) was required to get into the Chamber of Horrors, which was fairly gory but too brief and missing the Algerian Hook that had scared Scott and I shitless in Newport so many years before.

 

As a child, my mother frequently took the family to the coast.  I think my father much preferred the mountains, but trips there were rare. There were staples to a coast trip that were not always on the agenda, but often were. There was the Pixie Kitchen on the coast, with its mechanical pool of mermaids and sprites in the back, and its rusty old sister amusement park, Pixieland, some miles inland. There was the taffy shop that my mother and sister so loved, and a Li’l Sambo’s, a restaurant that was later to be determined as racist in theme.  All of which are gone now.

 

Also gone is the Newport, Oregon branch of Madam Tussard’s.  I only recall being indulged once or twice, but the place left a huge impression on me.  I can still remember many of the exhibits, including the presidents and an odd figure with an old fashioned camera, which stood in the shadows and flashed unexpectedly, giving visitors a jump.  In the Newport Chamber of Horrors were a variety of gruesome torture methods displayed, including a man with a huge hook going through his chest, hanging upside down.  Blood ran from his mouth into his nose.  This was labeled the Algerian Hook.

 

After there was a rather goofy presentation of London done on mock taxis, I half connected with the Asian girl guiding people into the cars.  Beyond the London exhibit was a science and technology exhibit which was a complete snooze.  It led up to a planetarium show which I was initially looking forward to. As soon as it began, though, I was disappointed to find out that it built on Disney’s Treasure Planet, an animated extension of Treasure Island.  It gave a tour of the solar system at the beginning which held my interest for a bit, but I began to nod in and out as we worked our way inside the solar system at around Neptune and eventually dozed until the end.  The planetarium dumped out into the gift shop, of course, which I struggled to navigate an escape for all of the strolling tourists.

 

I was dropped like a ton of bricks in the planetarium.  Often it takes a lot for me to sleep somewhere other than a bed, but with the noxious combination of lame animation, no lights and a comfortable chair, I felt no guilt.

 

I took the longer but less complicated Circle Line back to the Winchester, where I stripped and caught a couple of less than satisfying nods. I pulled myself up around seven in the evening, showered and surfed around the channels of the prehistoric television while I arranged my things and prepped to go out into the Big Black Smoke.  I was pleasantly surprised to see an old rerun of Good Neighbors on before I left.

 

Good Neighbors was another one of those PBS shows on Saturday nights when I was a kid that preceded Monty Python. I’m sure most of the humor went over my head when I was twelve or so, but I watched it religiously anyway.  The female lead was an odd, strangely alluring woman, particularly British.