Take me home country road

Monday July 2

Today I drove from Spruce Knob to the parents' abode outside Philadelphia. Once I exited West Virginia, it largely became the typical mass of undifferentiated interstates where the only things that change from one exit to the next are the labels on the hotels, eateries, and gas stations (which are repeated every 2-4 exits anyway...)

Wednesday July 4

After spending the 3d visiting with the folks, I headed homeward, still following the Appalachians to some rough extent. The day was gray and often rainy. It started with a drive up the Delaware Valley, including the Delaware Water Gap, and a near miss to the New Jersey High Point, which I did not visit since it was thunderstorming at the time.

The drive continued up into the Catskills of New York, including passing through Ashokan, site of a well-known traditional dance camp.

The drive came to a merciful end in Hudson, NY, where, at least in part due to the weather, I decided motelling was better than camping.

Home (or at least, Herself's home, as I was still homeless) was reached on the 5th.

Home sweet home

My time in Lima was, well, somewhat uninspiring.

Lima is a difficult city to navigate. There is no subway; there are no organized, documented, bus routes. Taxis are risky; gringos are likely to be scammed, and you have to negotiate prices. I had arranged transport to the hotel ahead of time (the round trip costing more than one night's hotel room), and the driver described how people were often charged as much as $100 for what should be a $10-15 ride.

This is the cost of not preparing (knowing what things ought to cost).

I walked from the hotel in the upscale, fairly safe, Miraflores area of Lima to nearby San Isidro, where there is a pre-Inca ruin called Huaca Huallamarca. This is basically a first-millenium pyramid made of mud bricks. The guide did a good job describing the site and its uses, as a political and religious center of the peoples there at time.

From there I went on what turned into a longer-than-intended walk up to the center of Lima. I should have taken a bus, but the bus system is confusing. Buses have locations, which are usually street names, but sometimes place names, printed on them. If you know where the roads go, you can know which bus to take to get where you're going. I was a bit gun-shy, so decided to walk. And walk. And walk. After 1+ hour, I reached Lima's Museo des Artes, which features some pre-Columbian pottery, textiles, and metal work, and a larger array of paintings from the colonial period to modern times. Lighting was not always great, and there were spotty English descriptions of the older stuff.

Another 40 minutes of walking, which included passing by some nice colonial architecture, brought me to the center of Lima, the Plaza de Armas, which is the typical Latin main square, full of bustle, and a surrounded by old buildings.

A few short blocks from the plaza is the Monastery of San Francisco, which reminded very much of things that I saw in Spain last year, except more run-down. Tile work (probably using tile from Spain) and woodwork were very similar to the Old World things I saw. The neat part of the tour was the catacombs, where archaeologists have cataloged bodies going all the way back to the early colonial days -- the monastery crypt was one of the first burial grounds of the colony.

Back near the plaza, I finally decided to brave the buses and caught a bus that dropped me (after about 45 diesel-choked minutes) near my hotel.

The next day (yesterday!) brought an early start to reach the airport, and an uneventful pair of flights home.

There's no place like home.

 

Wish I was Tom Sawyer

If I was Tom Sawyer, I'd probably be getting friends to help me with this:



That's the back of my house. It's had a perpetual paint-peeling problem since the house was resided 12 years ago. I've decided (given that I have experience painting things) to have a go at it myself, which is why I started scraping it down this week. Painting will begin next week, weather permitting. (And New England's weather has been glorious this week, and should be for at least part of next week.)

I've also been looking at volunteer opportunities in fields that I find at least a little interesting. I'll probably be doing some ESL tutoring in the near future.

The end of the journey

OK, so I'm at my brother's place in Ludwigshafen. I need to catch a flight from Frankfurt to London at about 2:30 PM. This is easily accomplished using Germany's relatively efficient train network, especially considering my brother's apartment is a short walk from the Ludwigshafen train station. This part goes off without a hitch. While I vaguely recall checking to see that the departure time was apparently normal, nothing appears out of the ordinary until I am sitting in the departure lounge (having passed through 3 layers of security including a pat-down) at about 2 PM, with no sign of an aircraft.

This usually gets me worried, since I know from experience how long it typically takes to turn an aircraft over between flights.

Never fear, my worries are realized. An announcement is made about air traffic control problems in the UK.

They don't know if our plane is even off the ground. They'll know more at, oh, 3:30. What's not mentioned is that the problem was only in the morning, and they're now basically in recovery mode.

This sort of thing sucks. But at least I'm going in the right direction (home).

I hightail it back out (past 3 layers of security), and head for the ticket counter, since I worry about making the London->Boston flight. Can they book me onto the later Boston flight? Or a flight series on a different day? The last thing I want to do is spend the night at a hotel near Heathrow (I like England just fine thank you, but this is not my idea of fun).

No can do. All possible flight combos are booked for the next few days, but they can conditionally book me onto the later Boston flight. This turns out to be a smart move.

Armed with the notion that I've made my best effort, I return to the gate lounge (through 3 layers of security, and another pat-down -- I've got the drill down about keeping the change out of the pockets) and wait.

The plane arrives around 3:30. I forget exactly when it takes off, but we arrive at Heathrow around 5, which of course missed my original Boston flight by 30 minutes. I get pointed at the flight transfer desk to fix my problem. The flight transfer desk has a line that looks at least 1 hour long. This puts the 6:30 departure of the second Boston flight at risk, if I have to wade (err, wait) through it.

Fortunately there is an BA rep at the end of the line doing triage. I explain what happened in Frankfurt, including the backup booking. He says "Oh good" and directs me to wait in a much shorter line, preceded only by a Pakistani family apparently doing a similar exercise for a different flight. By 5:30 I have a new boarding pass in hand. Yay.

Now all I have to worry about is food, since BA has catering problems. Never mind that special meals don't normally follow you when you rebook onto a different flight.

There's a semi-decent Italian restaurant at Terminal 4. I sit down, peruse the menu, and say "What's vegetarian that I can be done eating in 30 minutes?"

We settle on manicotti. 28 minutes later, I exit the restaurant and head for my gate. I stop at a computer, buy 5 minutes of Internet (cost: 1 Euro) to send email to Herself and Phil about the change of flights.

The flight to Boston is uneventful, even though it is populated by some teen church group that went to World Youth Day. They were remarkably well-behaved, even if the kid next to me never showed me much more than the back of his shoulder. One of the meal options turns out to actually be vegetarian, but I only pick at it, since I just ate. I get to see Robots on a 3"x5" screen (or whatever size those in-seat screens are) with horrible resolution. I'll see it on DVD again, I think.

Upon arrival in Boston, I spend more time than I ever have in recent times waiting to pass through passport control. As I'm waiting for my bag, I worry that I will have to wait to the bitter end of the baggage delivery to find out it didn't make the rebooking.

Fortunately, BA does manage to do some things right. There is a PA announcement that includes something that sounds vaguely like my name. I get hooked up with the person who has The List, who says "Sorry your bag didn't make it, here's a form for where we should deliver it tomorrow." Yay.

This speeds my exit considerably. Herself meets me as expected. We trundle (via MBTA Silver Line Bus and Red Line) to her place, and then Phil gives me a ride from there back to my place. Time? 11:30PM or so.

Let's see. I was up at 8AM Central European Time (GMT+1). Bed around midnight EDT (GMT-5). I don't like 30-hour days.

But it was good to be home, even if my bag wasn't. (It did arrive the next evening.)