In Which I Say Goodbye to my Family and Travel to the Far Side of the World.

The much anticipated trip to Seattle finally arrived, and after a tearful farewell at Cambridge train station on a dark and rainy Tuesday night, followed by a night in a grotty hotel in Horley I boarded my flight for Sea-Tac via Minneapolis. The outward journey was uneventful, bar one or two unsavoury incidents. While saying goodbye to my little family outside Cambridge station I was targetted by an aggressive beggar... when I failed to give any money he called me a c*8t. I was severely tempted to say some smartarse reply like "I wasn't going to give you any money, but now you've called me a c*8t, I can see your point. Here's a tenner" but wisely i held my tongue. I didn't want to get shivved before even starting the trip. To call my overnight stay hotel grotty is actually being extremely charitable to it... a brief inspection of the floor in the morning revealed a tube-map trace of silvery snail lines on the carpet. However it had two redeeming features, cheapness and proximity to Gatwick. The only other blogworthy event of the journey was inadvertantly caused by the Jet Lag Program (J-L-P). This is the method by which you can prepare your body for rapid adjustment to a new time zone by controlling diet, caffeine intake and initiating physical and mental activity at the correct time for the target time zone. Initially I was kind of sceptical about the whole thing and it seemed like a lot of faff, but I after I got on board with the program I quickly became a kind of J-L-P zealot, trying to convert new disciples to the cause at every turn. It was also be brilliant was of giving "Self 1" a trivial kind of activity to focus on during the build up to and duration of the journey, thus enabling "Self 2" to take control and direct the voyage in a natural and confident way. Anyway, I digress. One of the other tips on the program was to have two watches on board the plane, one with home time and one with destination time. This caused a bit of a stir at the security check going through Minneapolis-St Paul when I set off the (overly sensituve) metal detectors, and had to go for a more detailed search. The security guard was blunt, bald and gave the impression that he would not be taking any shit of anyone, least of all some weedy English dude. When he saw that I had two watches on he became very animated. "Hey, Dis guys got two watches on! Why have you got two watches on pal?" he asked, examining my wrists very closely. "Ahhh. That" I said... "Don't worry mate, Its just the jet-lag program... home time... destination time" I gesticulated at one wrist, then the other... "Keep your hands where I can see them buddy.... whaddaya, some kind of wise-guy?" After a bit more explanation, I finally managed to coax my way through, and the rest of my journey was uneventful. On the flight into Sea-Tac I put the final stage of the program into action by engaging in conversation with the person next to me... unfortunately she had been travelling for over 40 hours, thus completely trumping my pathetic 20 hours on the road. Bah, blumming competetive travellers. Arrival in Sea-Tac gratifyingly comfirmed the weather sterotype of the Pacific Northwest. Transalation: It was raining. Also conforming to sterotype was Dave, who was meeting me at baggage reclaim. He was late.