Minding the Gap

So as I’ve previously mentioned I visited London recently (and the airline shenanigans were lovely). There were many interesting places to go; in fact there were too many. If ever there were a place that could have nearly anything you’d want reasonably nearby and getting to it was very convenient but you’d not have enough time available to take in even a fraction of what it has to offer then that place would probably be London. There are some places where, even if you spent the entire day there, you still wouldn’t be able to see it all unless you literally ran through.

While overall there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference in daily life from the US (and I didn’t expect there to be) there are some notable variances. For example, Greater London area is extremely diverse. I regularly encountered shops and restaurants run by a wide range of peoples from Italian, French, Indian, and even Japanese. I’m sure there were more that I didn’t even happen to notice. The great thing about this being that they all carried very different products and foods and there was always something very different very close by. I only wish I’d had more time (and money) to try more of it.

Another difference was transportation. I’ve lived in large metropolitan areas before and even though public transportation is available people generally own and drive their own cars. In London, at least, it’s a little different. Though many people do still have their own cars it’s not as prevalent as it is here in the US. Most people seem to walk or take busses to wherever they need to go; given that everything you could need is usually nearby, it isn’t much of a hassle to do so.

Every now and then I had still wondered about it myself (since I do have several friends in the UK), unsure why everyone simply didn’t have and use their cars. The main reason, it seems to me, is that space is a very limited resource. What I’m saying is that, even if you had a car you would still need a place to park it while at your own home. That usually means along the sidewalk as only the wealthy seemed to have driveways. On top of that, I do not recall seeing a single parking lot for a storefront that you were not required to pay a parking ticket to use. I’m not talking about parking meters or parking garages, I’m talking about going to a normal everyday parking lot in front of any normal store and needing to pay for parking your car there. This, to me, coupled with fuel and other costs makes owning and using a car considerably expensive.

Now, in any large city it’s fairly normal to be limited on space but it extends beyond actual London itself and largely into the surrounding areas. The reason for all of this and also why most any store you could need would be conveniently close was still unknown to me. That is, the sheer cramped nature of it all. Even outside of the city, houses are all crowded together and usually built as a single unit with connecting walls. The streets are also very narrow by US standards and most roads that I saw were comparable to what we would call a ‘country road.’ In short it’s very many houses and buildings crammed together as closely as it seems sane to do. This leaves very little space for much else. I really was sort of amazed that the bus drivers were able to safely navigate these kinds of conditions and roads. Sometimes the distance between two passing vehicles is mere inches. I’ve heard many stories about Europeans coming to the US and being shocked by the sheer open space of everything or by how straight the roads are; I suppose I was surprised over the opposite.

Once you visit London proper, the best method of travel is the London Underground (which is also my favourite). It is essentially a series of railways that run underneath the various sections of the city. It does seem to be the fastest way to go wherever you want, however, if you’re unlucky you may find yourself with a defective travel card and will have to manually (by the staff) go through every gate.

The underground is how I traveled to places such as the British Museum and RAF Museum. Though, when the underground line I was riding to get to the RAF Museum came above ground I was somewhat taken aback. It sounds nothing short of silly for a system called ‘London Underground’ to be above the ground. Regardless of this odd turn of events I spent an entire day at the RAF Museum and still did not have the time to appreciate half of what they had and there were some sections I missed out on altogether. While I was there I attempted to take as many pictures as possible of all the rare and unique planes but unfortunately my camera did die a while before I would have liked and a good number of pictures didn’t come out so well. This was even truer with the British Museum; however I did arrive there rather late so I wasn’t able to spend very long there.

It really was great to see so many magnificent planes all well kept and all in one place. Before my visit to RAFM London I had only seen mostly American aircraft. So a lot of what they had on display were firsts for me. This included such things as Avro Vulcan, Focke-Wulf 190, and de Havilland Mosquito among many others. One of the things that really impressed me about the RAF Museum is that they have a full history (as much as it can be in some cases) for most planes available on their website.

I could go on about a great many more things but this isn’t entirely on the subject of my chronicle to begin with. I thought more that it was interesting rather than relevant. Either way it’s back to work for me. I’ve included download links below to some of the pictures I took while on my trip. The RAF Museum is a separate file while the British Museum and everything else is the other. Oh and as usual I can provide a high resolution (larger and better quality) copy of any image; just ask.

RAFM London

Greater London Area

No Time to be On Time.

It seems we’ve come to a point again where I’ve not updated in a while. I’ve said some few times before that there may be considerable periods where I don’t update because there’s nothing worth updating for or that I’d be busy; that’s fine though as I’d much rather spend time on work and more productive things than a chronicle such as this. So let’s get right to it, then.

This last December I actually found myself on a casual jaunt to London with relatives. My notice was something akin to ‘Oh by the way I’m buying airline tickets to London; which seat do you want?’ my only possible reply to being so suddenly informed was ‘It doesn’t matter’ and a shrug as I went back to work. In truth it really doesn’t matter due to there being no room in any standard seat on an airliner, regardless of where it is.

The plane to London was to leave at 6:00 PM and the airport itself is the better part of three hours away from where I am, so in the thought of arriving early we began the drive to the airport at 12:00 noon. We arrived (after some creative navigation) sometime about 3:40 PM; spent around another thirty minutes going through the service desk, security, and getting to the actual departure gate which happened to be the absolute farthest gate possible from the airport entrance. Given that we were early, there were plenty of seats to be had and so we sat by the closest seats to our gate. These particular seats were in the corner of the room between our gate and another which was unattended and, unknown to me at the time, its staff radio was still on. By this time it was roughly 4:20 PM so there would not be very long of a wait for the plane. I took this as a relief since there were at least two other flights leaving from different gates (one being the other gate in the corner where we sat) in the same area as ours and it would soon be crowded.

This gave me enough time to get something to eat, to say nothing of the fact that airline food is none too appealing nor filling. Perfect, or so I thought. Around 5:30 PM or so we hear an announcement that claims our plane is being cleaned and prepared for the flight to London. As 6:00 PM came closer it was easy to notice that there was not a plane to be seen anywhere near. As I sat there waiting I could occasionally hear messages over the unattended staff radio; none of which had yet caught my interest. 6:00 PM came and went with no announcement or indication as to the state of the flight, save for that soon the departures board changed to suggest we would leave instead at 6:30 PM. Almost immediately afterwards the radio came to life again and I hear a call for maintenance on 174; my flight. It was then easy to surmise, by the lackluster state of things, that it was unlikely we would depart at 6:30 PM either.

Soon the board claimed 6:45 and again there was another call for maintenance on 174. No one seemed to notice or even be able to hear the radio except for those of us sitting in the four seats near it; which included the Jamaican woman who had just joined us. Once they heard this second call they all began to talk about it and my father made sarcastic remarks about the delays. I simply decided to play with my Nintendo DS during the wait. As 6:45 came the board changed to 7:00 shortly followed by 7:12 which was itself followed by 7:20. All the while I could hear random calls about maintenance for 174 on the nearby staff radio. When it actually came to be around 7:20 there was an actual announcement made that our plane simply hadn’t arrived yet.

This is when I began to ponder the situation. Was it that the plane had been there for all those hours and had encountered problems while being cleaned thus meaning their claims it hadn’t yet arrived were a lie? Or was it instead that the plane hadn’t actually arrived and the previous statement about it being prepared was the lie? If so then why the sporadic radio calls about maintenance, would the plane then be having an issue which caused it to have not arrived yet? Nothing was clear and I wasn’t about to go ask because I knew I’d most likely not get a straightforward or possibly even truthful answer.

Around this time the gate area was greatly crowded to the point where it was soon to be standing room only. Passengers for two other flights, as well as ours, filled the small area with many of them opting to sit on the ground or their luggage rather than stand. There were some children playing within the crowd and soon a woman trying to get a seat on a flight at the gate desk after being sent there by her original airline with no tickets or documentation at all. Soon, again, the departure board for our flight changed and this time claimed 7:50.

A few minutes later there was another announcement about our flight. The announcer again claimed the plane had not arrived yet and then proceeded to say “Flight 174 to London-Heathrow will be departing at eight-ooo…” the announcer dragged out the ‘o’ demonstrating that any time they gave would definitely not be our departure time as even they didn’t seem to know and after several seconds of dragging the ‘o’ out finished by finally saying “…ooo-five.” My immediate comment was “That’s a lot of o’s” as the board changed to reflect this new ‘departure’ time.

It was then that we found out the Jamaican woman sitting next to us had been waiting for the same flight since 9:00 AM. I can’t imagine spending that many hours at an airport doing absolutely nothing. Even with a portable game system such as my DS it would still be fairly mind numbing and deathly boring to me. I thought that since they made an announcement vocally claiming the departure time to be 8:05 PM then at least in knowing this was false information the plane would likely leave sometime during the hour of eight. This was not the case, either.

The board still continued its various time changes for our plane as the other flights came and left. It was dark outside now and thus difficult or impossible to see any planes that happened to be landing and no way to actually know the status of our plane until it had physically come to the gate. Eventually it was announced that the plane had arrived and it shortly came to the gate and unloaded its passengers sometime around 8:20. The flight staff also changed out after everyone had gotten off and our latest fantasy with departure times was 8:50.

Finally around 9:05 they called for first class to board, and just a short few minutes later they call for the other passengers to board even though the first line had not at all cleared. The line for waiting passengers sort of deformed and eventually split into two as they subtly rushed to get people on the now, very late, plane. To the best of my knowledge the plane finally began to take off around 9:30 EST for a flight that’s over seven hours long; the airline food was much more appealing now.

Overall the trip was fine and the return flight was rather uneventful. My favourite part was the day I went to RAFM London which I’ll cover in another update along with some other things.