Started off my journey on Friday morning at about 5am. Couldn't find my hair fudge but aside from that I think I managed to remember everything I needed. Got to the train station and caught the 5:20 train to London. Louise got me a seat in first class, but first class wasn't as first class as usual this morning. They did the usual barely drinkable complimentary coffee but no food was served. So went I got into London I was starving. Got the tube and the tube replacement bus to terminal 4 at Heathrow.
This was my longest ever journey travelling alone, before this I had just done a short hop to Grenoble, France! It is pretty lonely travelling alone. Security was the highest I have seen it on both sides of the Atlantic. I used the BA online checkin service, checked in my bag for the hold and then I thought I was done. Just had to go through security so I went to the red barriers and was directed to the back of the line. A few times along there I thought I had lost the line but it really was that long! I think I was waiting for about an hour to get through security, thankfully I had arrived with lots of time to spare.
They had a screen up saying that people may be selected to be scanned with a new body scanner and I was hoping they would choose me. Don't know if it is a prototype of the new THz scanning technology, but the scientist in me was curious. They did however swob my laptop quite thoroughly and scan the rag with an ion scanner I think. Although I didn't get very long to look around duty free I picked up a bottle of mint chocolate Baileys and some caramel flavoured Baileys. I also managed to grab a quick bite to eat before boarding the plane. I got searched again on the walkway going down to the plane although the man there was a lot friendlier. It does make you feel safer with these levels of security but it makes travel take so much longer.
The flight was fairly uneventful. I met an American guy travelling back home who was sat next to me on the plane. I managed to get a window seat. I love looking out of the window at the world beneath, or even the cloud tops if it is cloudy. This was a really good flight as it was light the whole way there. The hot meal was really nice too, as were the sandwiches on the way back. BA has always been pretty good for this though. Once we got there it was time to wait to go through immigration control. This took ages. There was a really cute sniffer dog who got pretty inquisitive around me - I think he could smell Dax and the lady had to tell him off for muzzling me too much.
As usual the security people on this side were much more serious. They are just doing their jobs but they are quite alienating. I imagine they have a lot to deal with. After about an hour of waiting in line it was my turn. I got fingerprinted and had my picture taken for the first time. They are very thorough but when you are as tired as I am after travelling for 24 hours nearly and getting less that 3 hours sleep in 48 hours or so the last thing you feel like doing is explaining why you are there. Once I got through I got my bags and went out into the airport. Then the next challenge - finding the hotel!
In the end figured the light rail would get me there and got on it. It took ages to get to my stop and I could see it was well outside of Baltimore and got the feeling we had screwed up on the booking. When I got off at the stop I wanted it was just a car park and no path to the main road. So I walked up the road and found a fast food place. At this point I felt like giving up. I walked into the car park of a fast food place and looked around for someone I could ask for directions from someone and maybe a taxi number.
I was lucky to bump into a local called Thomas who was more than helpful. He told me the hotel was about 1.5 miles away and wouldn't hear of me getting a taxi. He very kindly offered me a lift once he had picked up his dinner from the restaurant. I couldn't thank him enough, although I was so tired I could feel my brain fuzzing over. He gave me his card and invited Louise and I over for dinner next week. He was the first person I gave one of my new business cards too in the States. He kindly dropped me off at the hotel and gave me his card too.
The hotel is nice, but when I looked around the day after it became clear that Cross Keys really was a village outside of Baltimore and the Radisson does run a shuttle service but not all that frequently. Public transport links are not very good to it either, so I will have to stick to the shuttle times. I took a walk around the inner harbour area yesterday and checked out the convention center. It all looks nice but it would have been good to be in a hotel much closer to the inner harbour.
This is possibly my longest ever entry so I am going to leave it here. Went for a quick jog this morning to try and burn off some of these extra calories. Going to grab some breakfast now, then get ready to go into the convention center to register and see what I can see. Hopefully it will all go well, but it has been a pretty rocky start...
